"The secret of expounding "Romans
seven" is to avoid becoming lost in the details. There is no
chapter in the Bible in which it is so easy to "miss the wood
because of the trees" as in this 7th chapter of the Epistle to
the Romans. It is essential, therefore, that we go on reminding
ourselves as to the chapter's fundamental purpose, otherwise we
shall become lost in the details. Its primary object, its
fundamental theme is to deal with the place and the function of
the Law in God's dealings with the human race. Every detail
must be considered in the light of that purpose, and of nothing
else. To start by thinking that the object of this chapter is
that Paul should give us his experience is to miss the whole
point. That is not his purpose at all. His fundamental object
is to deal with the charge that the Jews and others were
bringing against him by saying that his preaching meant that
the Law of God was not only useless but actually evil, that it
had no function or purpose at all, and that it would have been
better if it had never been given. It was the charge that his
preaching of justification by faith only, and by grace
salvation by grace--was really throwing the Law right out and
dismissing it entirely."--D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones

"But now we are delivered from
the law, that being dead wherein we were held, that we should
serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of the
letter." --

The Apostle gives here what we may describe
as his final answer to the criticism that was so constantly
brought against his preaching, namely, that it discounted the Law
and could lead to nothing but immorality and antinomianism. He has
dealt chiefly with the charge of antinomianism in chapter 6, and
here in this chapter he specifically takes up the question of the
relationship of the Christian to the Law. He is concerned to show
that the Law, and any attempt to base life on the Law only, far
from helping us to live the godly life actually is a hindrance. He
has established that in verse 5. But now, he says, we are in a
position to live the godly life because we have finished with that
which held us down and which aggravated our problem; we have
entered into an entirely new life.

We are considering, therefore, at the
moment, the contrast which the Apostle draws between this new life
and the old life, and we have dealt so far with the general
differences.

We come now to the particular differences
which we must look at in detail. This is not something merely
theoretical; it is essentially practical, because the charge
brought against him was a practical charge, something like the
following: "Ah," they said, "this preaching of grace and this
preaching of justification by faith sounds very wonderful and of
course it pleases people, but the question is, What does it lead
to in practice? That is the test; what is it like in ordinary
daily life and living?" The Apostle was prepared to meet them on
their own ground, and to show that it is because this, and this
alone, leads to the practical daily living of holiness that he is
preaching it, and rejoicing in it. The big contrast between the
old and the new is that we no longer "slave" "in the oldness of
the writing, but in the newness of the Spirit." The Apostle
regards this distinction as most important, indeed vital; and it
is emphasized frequently in the New Testament. We have seen it in
the 3rd chapter of this Apostle's Second Epistle to the
Corinthians. It is found also in the Epistle to the Hebrews in
chapter 8, where the writer draws a contrast between the old
covenant which God had made with the children of Israel through
Moses, and the new covenant which He has made through Jesus
Christ.

We have here, then, a crucial verse, which
is vital in the Apostle's argument in this section, and indeed
vital to the whole of his exposition of the Christian salvation in
this Epistle. As I have suggested, the remainder of this chapter
is but a digression to deal with difficulties that have arisen in
people's minds. But verse 6 is the important, crucial
statement.

What are the differences, in detail,
between life lived "in the Spirit" and the old way of living
"according to the writing" and "under the law" and "in the flesh?"

First, there is the difference between an
external and an internal relationship to the Law of God, in other
words, to morality. This difference is well described in the 3rd
chapter of Second Corinthians, verse 3, where Paul says,
"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of
Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the
Spirit of the living God." Before, it was, as it were, a writing
"with ink," but it is no longer that, it is now a writing with the
Spirit. But, further, "not in tables of stone"--that is something
outside you. Well, where is the writing now? In "fleshy tables of
the heart." The old law was outside a man, written on stones,
written with ink, something you looked at with your physical eyes.
That is no longer the position. It is now engraven and written and
implanted in the fleshy tables of the heart, in the very centre of
the personality, in the deepest recesses of our being. We are no
longer looking at something outside ourselves, we are considering
something that is already within us, and working within us. The
Epistle to the Hebrews states it in chapter 8. The author is
quoting what Jeremiah had said in the 31st chapter of his
prophecy. God says that He is going to make a new covenant with
the people--"not the old covenant that I made with your fathers,"
but a "new covenant." What are the characteristics of the new
covenant? "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in
their hearts." Before, He had put the laws on tables of stone
which He handed to Moses, and Moses brought them down to the
people. But in the new covenant He is going to "put (his) laws
into their minds, and (imprint) write them in their
hearts."

Here we meet with a fundamental distinction
between the two covenants, the two ways of life. Before you become
truly Christian you try to conform to a standard and a pattern
outside yourself; but to be a Christian means that the standard is
inside you. Of course, in one sense it is still outside, but the
important fact is that it is now inside as well. You read it in
the Word, but it is also in your mind and in your heart. You are
not only looking at something external, you are also aware of that
which is within. You do not have to be persuaded to look at that
which is outside you; there is now a power within you calling your
attention to it, a principle operating in the centre of your
personality. The same truth is stated in the Epistle to the
Philippians, chapter 2, verse 13: "Work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you (inside
you) both to will and to do of his good pleasure." The Apostle
rejoices that we have become dead to the Law, and that we are
delivered from the Law which formerly held us because we can now
serve "in newness of Spirit, not in the oldness of the writing."
It is within us, in our minds and in our hearts.

Secondly--and the first point necessarily
leads to this--this new life in the Spirit means that we have now
an understanding which we had not got before. I mean an
understanding of the Law and its purpose, and everything that is
true of it in the economy of God. What was the trouble with the
people under the old dispensation? The Apostle, in 2 Corinthians
3, says that "a veil was upon their hearts" (verses 13-16). That
is the trouble with people who are "under the law," who are "in
the flesh." Week by week, he says, they hear the reading of the
Law of Moses; but they do not understand it because there is a
veil over their hearts; their minds are blinded. So though they
are studying it, and regard it as important, and though their
teachers spend the whole of their lives in expounding it and
making comments upon it, and forming those traditions of which we
read so much in the Gospels, they are still ignorant of the real
meaning of the Law, and lack true understanding. But, says the
Apostle, "when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken
away," and they will begin to understand. The trouble with the man
who is not a Christian is that he lacks a fundamental
understanding of this new life that God would have us live; he
does not see why one should live it, nor what its purpose is. He
has no conception of God's purpose with respect to man; he knows
nothing about God's great scheme and plan and purpose of
salvation. Those Jews were reading the Old Testament and yet they
saw nothing of this at all. That was why they misinterpreted the
Law, and thought that, if they but carried out certain commands as
they understood them, they would satisfy God. They never saw the
real meaning and purpose of the Law. They never realized that it
was but to be "our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ." They never
saw that its main function was to bring out "the exceeding
sinfulness of sin"; they never understood that "by the law is the
knowledge of sin." They thought that they could justify themselves
by the Law. There was a veil over their hearts, their minds could
not function truly. That was their condition under "the oldness of
the writing." But the moment a man turns to the Lord, the veil is
taken away, and he sees and understands; his whole position is
revolutionized.

The Third thing is, that a man begins to
see now the vital distinction between observing the mere "letter"
of the law and being concerned about the "spirit" of the law. That
is a great distinction, which explains the whole problem of the
Pharisees and scribes and doctors of the law. They were only
interested in the "letter" of the law, they never understood that
what matters, essentially, in the Law is the spirit that is
involved. The supreme commentary on that matter is the Sermon on
the Mount, and especially the 5th chapter of the Gospel according
to Matthew. The section from verse 17 to the end is devoted almost
entirely to an exposure of this false attitude of the Jews and
their teachers to the Law of God. They taught and believed that,
if you do not actually murder a man in a physical sense, you are
not guilty of murder. But our Lord shows very clearly that that is
only observing the letter, whereas the Law is concerned about the
spirit. If you say "Raca" to your brother, or if you say "Thou
fool," you are guilty of murder. Likewise He works it out in terms
of adultery and other matters, such as going the second mile, and
throwing in the cloak also.

Ultimately it is a question of loving, He
says. "Love your enemies." They never understood that principle;
they had always regarded these matters in terms of the external
letter only, and had never realized that the essential thing about
the law is the principle, the spirit, that belongs to true
obedience.

The Apostle Paul here and there admits that
all this was once true of himself, as for instance, in this very
chapter in verses 8 and 9. "I was alive without the law once, but
when the commandment came sin revived and I died." He says
virtually the same thing in Philippians 3, in that piece of
autobiography in verses 4 to 8. What he had never understood and
grasped was that the Law says "Thou shalt not covet." It is not
enough simply that you refrain from doing certain things; the
question is: Do you sin in your imagination, in your mind and in
your heart? Do you "covet" them? "God seeth the heart." Our Lord
said to the Pharisees, as recorded in Luke 16:15: "Ye are they
which justify yourselves before men; but God seeth the heart: for
that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the
sight of God." God reads and is concerned about the heart. So
these people came to our Lord one day and asked, "Which is the
great commandment in the law?" They thought that they would catch
him with this question concerning all their 613 rules and
regulations. But He exposed their utter ignorance and blindness by
answering, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and all thy soul, and all thy mind, and all thy strength; this is
the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." "Love is the fulfilling
of the law" (Romans 13:10). The Law is not merely a collection of
rules and regulations; it is not a mere matter of the letter; it
is the spirit that counts primarily.

The Jews had never seen that. But the
moment a man comes into the realm of the Spirit he sees it at
once, and he perceives that all his former morality is but as
"filthy rags," "dung," refuse. That old righteousness of which he
used to boast so much is now of no value at all. Once he realizes
the spiritual character of the Law, its positive character, he
sees the hopelessly mechanical and superficial nature of his
former external correctness. The superficial outward performance
still leaves a sink of iniquity; he now learns that it is of no
value at all in the sight of God. But it is only the man who is
"in the Spirit" who sees this. The tragedy of the moralist, the
merely "good" man, is that his native blindness remains, as was
the case with so many Jewish teachers. But the moment a man is in
the realm of the Spirit he sees that he is utterly condemned, and
he is forced to seek his salvation in the Lord Jesus
Christ.

The Fourth point of difference between the
man living this new life "in the Spirit," and the man formerly
living his life "in the writing," "under the law" and "in the
flesh," is that the former has an entirely new factor in his life,
a new motive for his good and righteous living. The old motive was
fear of God. He tried to keep the Law because he was afraid of
God. It is the essence of wisdom to try to please God;
self-preservation and self-interest dictate such a course. There
are many people today who are trying to live the good life simply
because they are afraid of hell, afraid of God, and the Judgment.
"If only" God and the spiritual realm could be dismissed, "if
only" someone could prove that when a man dies that is the end,
you would see a difference in their conduct. They are living a
life of fear; self- preservation, self-interest are supreme. But
even at its best and highest, even when the fear motive is not so
prominent as is the case with many so-called intellectuals today
-- the people who say they have no interest in Christian dogma and
doctrine, but are very interested in morality for the sake of
morality--what is the motive? It is self-satisfaction. They desire
to keep up their own standard, they want to satisfy their own
conception of the moral code, they want to live on good terms with
themselves. The Apostle says in the 10th chapter of this Epistle
in verse 3, "They, going about to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness
of God." He says, "I bear them record that they have a zeal of
God, but not according to knowledge." They were working very hard,
they were trying to produce righteousness, but, he says, "it is
their own righteousness." They were very proud of it; they were
well pleased with themselves, as the Apostle Paul says in
Philippians 3: "As touching the righteousness which is of the law,
blameless." How proud he was of his righteousness and of his
keeping of the Law as he had misunderstood it! He tells the
Galatians that in this matter of zeal for the Law he was "more
exceeding zealous" than others. He was pleasing himself, and was
altogether self-satisfied. That is always the case with the
Pharisee.

Our Lord has given a graphic picture of all
this in Luke 18 in His parable of the two men who went up to the
temple to pray, one a publican, one a Pharisee. The Pharisee, he
says, walked right to the front and said, "God, I thank thee that
I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or
even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of
all that I possess." How supremely self-satisfied was this man! He
does not ask God for pardon and forgiveness, or for any help or
strength; he is self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied.
His whole motive was to please himself. That is the characteristic
of the old life lived "according to the law" and "in the
flesh."

But what a difference there is when you
come to this new life "in the Spirit"! As Christians we are
anxious to live this godly, this holy life because we have within
us a desire to please God and to please the Lord Jesus Christ;
also because we are anxious to express our thanksgiving and our
praise. We live the Christian life, not because we are afraid of
hell any longer, nor to please ourselves, nor to attain a standard
of our own, nor to contrast ourselves with others who are flagrant
sinners and failures. We are no longer primarily concerned about
self-preservation, because we know that we have been saved, and
shall be kept and preserved until "the day of Christ." We live it
because we know that it is the way to show our love to God, our
gratitude, our thanksgiving, for all that He has done for us. The
Apostle expresses this eloquently in the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians in chapter 5, verses 14,15: "For the love of Christ,"
he says, "constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died
for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that (in
order that) they which live should no longer live unto themselves,
but unto him that died for them, and rose again." These words
supply the Christian's argument. He says, "I was dead, and Christ
died for me that I might have life. Did He die in order that I
might go on living for myself as I did before? No, but that I
might live for Him who gave Himself for me and rose again from the
dead." The motive for Christian living is not even to be holy, it
is to please God and to glorify His Name, and a Christian is a man
who has realized that high calling. The other man knows nothing of
it; he lives for his own glory. The first thing that is true of a
Christian is that he is now living unto God and for the glory of
God, not for himself. His grand motive is to please God who in his
infinite love and mercy and compassion and kindness sent His only
begotten Son into this world, even to die for us.

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my
all

That is the New Testament way of preaching
holiness; that is the only true motive for being holy. We should
not go to "holiness meetings" because we have a problem or
something we desire to be rid of. We should desire to be rid of
our "self." And as preachers we should not appeal to people to
come forward to "receive" something, but rather face them with the
demand of the crucified, dying Christ, who has given His life,
whose body was broken, whose blood was shed, that we might be
rescued and redeemed and become the children of God. The motive
should be love, gratitude, praise, thanksgiving to Him who has
given Himself for us. The Christian is a man who has an utterly,
entirely new motive; it is this love to God.

The Fifth consequence follows directly from
that. This man, with this new understanding, and this new motive,
lives his life in an entirely new spirit. In the old life, as the
Apostle reminds us in the next chapter in verse 15, he was held by
a "spirit of bondage." "For," he says, "we have not received the
spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." "The spirit of
bondage"! That old life, that life "under the law" is a grievous
bondage, a slavery of the worst type, a heavy burden. Any man who
is living "under the law" always has a sense of hopelessness and
despair. He lives in that spirit; he is always under tension and
stress and strain. Oh, the bondage of that old life "under the
law" and "in the flesh"! "But now" we are living with an entirely
new spirit, and doing our work "in the Spirit and not in the
oldness of the letter." There should be no bondage in the
Christian life. "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after
righteousness." The other man does not "hunger and thirst after
righteousness"; he is trying to live the good life because he is
afraid of God, and afraid of God because he does not want to
suffer, and because of his pride. But with the Christian it is
entirely different. You cannot be a Christian without it being
true of you that you "hunger and thirst after righteousness."
Christians are "blessed," happy, and they "shall be
filled."

John, in his First Epistle, chapter 5,
says, "And his commandments are not grievous." God's commandments
were very grievous to the man before he became a Christian; they
were a burden. Peter explained to the Council in Jerusalem (Acts
15) that they were "a yoke and a bondage," too heavy to be borne.
But John says that to the Christian "His commandments are not
grievous." That is, partly, how we know that we are Christians; we
love His commandments now, they are no longer a burden, no longer
a terrible task. Paul adds to that in 2 Corinthians 3:17 "The Lord
is that Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty." Another translation is, "Where the Spirit is Lord, there
is liberty." When you are in the realm of the Spirit, there is
liberty. There is no liberty "under the law"; the task-master is
watching you and you are afraid. That was Luther's experience as a
monk before his conversion, fasting and sweating in his cell. But
when you become a Christian and enter the realm of the Spirit,
"there is liberty." You are set free from the shackles of "that
wherein we were held"; you are dead to the Law, you are a free man
able to use your powers. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
is liberty."

Think of the encouragements enjoyed by the
Christian. There were no encouragements in that old life; that is
why we were dis-spirited. But all has become wonderfully
different. Start with the knowledge of sins forgiven. God said
that in the New Covenant He was going to make, "Their sins and
their iniquities will I remember no more." There is nothing so
liberating as to know that all your past sins are forgiven. It is
the most liberating thought one can ever have. If you are worried
about forgiveness, and worried about your whole standing and
position before God, you are of necessity depressed; and in that
depressed state Satan has an advantage over you, and you go down
still further. There is nothing more wonderful than to know that
our sins are forgiven--and we do know it! "There is therefore now,
no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."

But secondly, and summarizing what we have
been saying since we began studying chapter 6, we are dead to sin,
we are dead to the Law, we are dead to "death." In chapter 6,
verses 9,10, we are reminded that "Christ being raised from the
dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in
that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he
liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead
indeed unto sin, but alive unto God." What is true of Him is true
of us. He has died once and for all; He will never die again;
"death hath no more dominion over him." And it has no dominion
over us. This is part of the liberty of the children of God. As a
Christian I am dead to the dominion of sin, I am dead to the
dominion of the Law, I am dead even to the dominion of death. As a
Christian I am simply going to "fall asleep"; I am "in Christ,"
and therefore I shall never die, I shall never experience the
"second death." I am out of the dominion of sin and of the Law and
of death. That is the new spirit in which one lives; that is the
liberty the children of God enjoy.

God has also said to us--it is a part of
the New Covenant--"I will be to them a God, and they shall be to
me a people." He has said, "I will dwell in them and walk in them,
and I will be their God and they shall be my people." Can anything
be more wonderful than that? Nelson said on the morning of the
Battle of Trafalgar, "England expects that every man this day will
do his duty." What a motive, what an encouragement! But God says
to us, "I am your God, and you are My people. Remember that and
live in the light of it." Could a Christian have any greater
encouragement?

But God tells us further, of His great
purpose with respect to us, and of all He has planned and purposed
for us. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification. "We
have already met with this at its very highest in chapter 5, verse
10: "For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by
the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be
saved in his life." He has put us into the life of His Son, and if
we are in the life of His Son all else is certain, it is
guaranteed. We shall be saved completely and entirely; nothing can
stop it. Then think of our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me remind you of what we have been told in verse 4 in this
chapter, that the Lord Jesus Christ is our husband. "That we might
be married to another, even to him who is raised from the
dead"

He is everything, He is the "All and in
all." What an encouragement! The man "in the flesh" knows nothing
of this.

Then think of the "hope of glory" and the
certainty of our getting there. "Being therefore justified by
faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; by
whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we
stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (chapter 5:1,2).
There is no encouragement beyond that! "Every man that hath this
hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3).
This is the way in which the new man, the Christian man, lives his
life "in the Spirit." He faces all problems in a new spirit of
liberty, rejoicing, hope, thanksgiving and praise.

That leads me to the Sixth great difference
between the new and the old man -- the new ability and power which
the former has, and of which he is aware. In the old life the man
was left to himself. "What the law could not do," says Paul in the
3rd verse of the next chapter, "in that it was weak through the
flesh." God gave the Ten Commandments and said--as we loosely
translate chapter 10, verse 5 of this Epistle-- "If you keep them,
and continue to keep them, you will save yourselves by doing so."
But "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God"; "there
is none righteous, no, not one." But what of this new man "in the
Spirit?" He has new life; he is a "partaker of the divine nature,"
he has received new life in Christ, he is born again of the
Spirit. Remember Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 6--"The
letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." That is what we
need--life and vigour and power--and "the Spirit giveth life." Not
only so; the Spirit continues to work within us. Go back to
Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13 again: "Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling." How can I do it? Why impose
such a task upon me? The thing is impossible. The Patriarchs have
failed, the Children of Israel have failed. But there the word
stands: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." How
can it be done? "For it is God that worketh in you." He is working
in you "both to will and to do of his good pleasure." As the
result of the Spirit within us, we are able to do things that were
unthinkable before.

Paul says in the next chapter of this
Epistle, verse 13, "If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds
of the body, you shall live." Ask a man who has not got the Spirit
within him to mortify the deeds of the body. To discover the
result you have but to read the lives of many of the so-called
"Catholic saints" and others who had never seen the truth of
"justification by faith only," and who segregated themselves from
society, put on camel-hair shirts and often half-starved
themselves. They were trying to "mortify the deeds of the body"
and the more they tried the more conscious they were of failure.
You can go "out of the world," but you take the deeds of the body
with you, in your mind and imagination. You cannot get rid of the
deeds of the body in that way; but "through the Spirit" you can do
so, because you are given new strength. The Apostle says to
Timothy in the Second Epistle, chapter 1, verse 7, "God hath not
given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a
sound mind." Power: love: discipline: or as he has already said in
chapter 6, verse 14 of this Epistle, "Sin shall not have dominion
over you." John says the same thing in his First Epistle, chapter
4, verse 4: "Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the
world." Hence, do not be frightened by the devil though he is a
powerful enemy. Do not be terrified, do not be alarmed; you now
have power, you have strength, you are "in the Spirit"; life "in
the Spirit" brings all blessing to you.

So we come to the Seventh distinction which
emphasizes the entirely different result of these two lives lived
in these entirely different ways. "When we were in the flesh, the
motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to
bring forth fruit unto death." Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:6 that
"The letter killeth." It always does so. That old life is a life
of constant struggle, and of constant failure, constant defeat. It
becomes increasingly difficult. As you get older you find your
powers waning, and the devil seems to become stronger. Your very
physical condition leads to new temptations and sins; it gets
worse and worse; you are less and less able to resist, and you
feel utterly and completely hopeless. It is a kind of living
death. But what of this new life in the Spirit? Turn to 2
Corinthians 3:18. The Apostle has said already, "The Lord is that
Spirit, and where the Spirit is Lord there is liberty." Then,
praise God, he adds, "But we all with open face beholding as in a
glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image (into
His image) from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord." I have quoted the translation found in the Authorised
Version, but there is a better one--"We all, with open face
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are being changed."
We ourselves are not doing this, it is being done to us, As we
behold in the glass the glory of the Lord--as we go on living this
life "in the Spirit," with this new understanding and insight and
motive and love and power, and all that is so true--as we go on
doing all this, we are being "changed into the image of God's dear
Son," and "from glory to glory." It is a progressive life; it gets
better and better and higher and higher. We become more and more
like the blessed Son of God. Do not believe those who say that a
Christian on the verge of the grave is in exactly the same
position as he was at the beginning. He is "being changed from
glory to glory," from one degree of glory to another, and on and
on progressively.

This is the truth. Even in this life we can
say, "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until
the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). If you are in the hands of
this great Potter; if God, through His Son, and by the Spirit, has
begun a work in you, He will never give it up, He will never leave
it incomplete; He will complete it, until on that great Day, as
Ephesians 5:27 reminds us so gloriously, we shall be "without
spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; holy and without blemish."
What shall we say to these things? There is but one thing, I feel,
that is fitting. Let us say with Jude, "Now unto him that is able
to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the
presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our
Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and
ever. Amen."

ROMANS
7:7

"What shall we say then, Is the
law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law:
for I had not known sin, except the law had said, Thou shall
not covet." --

The history of the interpretation of this
chapter, and especially from this point to the end, is a most
interesting and fascinating one. As I have already been
suggesting, I believe that much of the disagreement has been due
solely to the fact that so many have not troubled to be guided by
the context, but have just come to the chapter in and of itself,
and especially this section, and doing so, have gone
astray.

I would remind you once more, therefore, of
the whole setting; and to do this we must go back to the end of
chapter 5. As I am never tired of repeating, the key to the
understanding of chapters 6 and 7 of this Epistle is chapter 5. If
we are not clear about chapter 5 we cannot possibly understand
chapters 6 and 7; and in my view these two chapters form a
parenthesis with two parts, chapter 6 being one and chapter 7 the
other. The Apostle introduced this parenthesis because of what he
had been saying at the end of chapter 5, especially in verses 20
and 21: "Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound.
But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin
hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Christ Jesus our Lord." It is
that 20th verse that really gives us the key. The Apostle, having
been describing how the Christian believer is "in Christ" and what
is bound to happen to him because he is "in Christ," suddenly
realizes that many might say, "But surely all this is to put the
Law on one side, which means that there will be no standard or
canon for conduct and for behaviour. It is the Law that has always
guaranteed holiness; but your teaching seems to brush the Law
aside, and therefore there is nothing to safeguard holy
living."

The Apostle therefore takes up this
difficulty. In chapter 6, as we saw at length, he takes up the
moral aspect and deals with it in terms of "Shall we continue in
sin, that grace may abound?"

Here, in chapter 7, he deals with the other
question, namely, the place of the Law. In chapter 5, verse 20, he
had remarked that "The law came in by the side" as it were. Then
in chapter 6, verse 14, he had made the statement, "For sin shall
not have dominion over you; for (because) you are not under the
law, but under grace"; and he seems to rejoice in the fact that
Christians are not "under law." But he realizes that there were
people who would misinterpret those two statements as meaning that
the gospel entirely dismisses the Law, and renders it valueless
and pointless.

It is this subject that the Apostle takes
up in this 7th chapter. It is the chapter of chapters concerning
the Law and its function, and the relationship of the Christian to
the Law. It is vitally important that we should be clear as to
this particular relationship; so the Apostle expounds it in the
body of this chapter, and step by step shows that sanctification
by the Law is as impossible as was justification by the Law. In
his first four chapters the Apostle is proving that "no man can be
justified by the deeds of the law"; he is now equally concerned to
show that no man can be sanctified by the Law or by being "under
the law."

That is the general theme of the entire
chapter; but he divides it into three main sections.

The FIRST is verses 1-6, with which we have
already dealt. It supplies a general statement to show that as
Christians we are in an entirely new relationship to the Law, and
that that is essential in order that "we may bring forth fruit
unto God," serving God in "newness of Spirit, and not in the
oldness of the letter."

We now come to the SECOND section. It is
best to regard it as running from verse 7 to verse 12. Verse 13
then sums it up and also acts as a point of transition from this
section to the next, which starts at verse 14 and goes on to the
end of the chapter.

In verses 7 to 12 the Apostle's purpose is
to vindicate the Law, the Law in and of itself, the Law as such;
and to prove that the Law must never be held responsible for our
failure to keep it. It is a vindication of the character of the
Law. He absolves it completely from every charge of involvement in
our guilt. Verse 13, as I say, is a kind of summing up of that
argument and an introduction to the next section, verses 14-25.

In verse 14 to 25 he gives a demonstration
in practice, and from the experimental standpoint, of what he has
been saying in the second section. He clearly felt that this was
necessary in order to show how the Law not only fails to deliver
us, but actually aggravates our problem. He ends by showing that,
though the Law leaves us in a state of complete hopelessness,
there is nevertheless a hope. So we have the triumphant cry, "I
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

To recapitulate: the first section, verses
1-6, really says everything; and what Paul does in these two
further sections is merely to elaborate what he has said there.
His whole case in the first section, as we have already seen, is
to say that we are no longer "under the law," but joined to
Christ, so that we can now "serve in newness of Spirit, and not in
the oldness of the letter." These two sections, 7-13 and 14-25,
are nothing but a working out in detail, and a demonstration of,
that original contention, and a defence of it against possible
misunderstanding.

We are now ready to start upon this second
section beginning at verse 7, where we read "What shall we say
then? Is the law sin?" The Apostle has been making certain
statements about the Law, and he imagines someone saying: "Well,
there is only one conclusion to draw from what you have been
saying, and that is, that the Law, the Law that was given through
Moses, is something evil, is something bad in and of itself." He
seems to imagine this objector saying, further, "You had already
made two statements which disturbed me. You had already insulted
the Law by saying that it only "came in on the side"; and then you
had gloried in the fact that we are not "under the law but under
grace." But you have gone further now. You have said in verse 5,
"When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the
law"--aggravated, produced by the Law--"did work in our members to
bring forth fruit unto death." Surely you are saying therefore
that the law is sin? You rejoice in the fact that we are not
"under law" in exactly the same way as you have rejoiced that we
are not "under sin." Therefore sin and law must be synonymous;
there is no difference between them. The Law is bad, sinful,
harmful, something that leads only to our death. Is that what you
are saying?"

At once the Apostle answers with his famous
formula, translated in the Authorized Version as "God forbid," but
which should be translated as "Far be it from our thoughts," "Let
it be unthinkable." That suggestion, he says, should never enter
one's mind. He has already used the same formula in chapter 6, and
before that in chapter 3. He said in chapter 6, "Shall we continue
in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid," Here again he says
that this is something that no one should ever entertain. He
virtually says the following: "As there are people who think such
things, we must investigate, we must examine this, because if you
really draw that conclusion from what I have been saying about the
Law, the fact of the matter is that you have completely
misunderstood my whole teaching." So he has to introduce a
subsidiary parenthesis--a parenthesis within a parenthesis--in
order to make it plain.

I am labouring the point for this reason.
In this section, and the one that follows, the Apostle puts his
case in personal terms. That is what has caused all the argument
and the disputation. It has been assumed that the Apostle's main
purpose in this chapter is to relate his experience. In my view
that is not the case at all. He would never have written what we
have from verses 7 to 25 were it not for the likelihood of the
misunderstanding of what he had said in verses 1 to 6, indeed of
what he had already said at the end of chapter 5. In other words
the Apostle's object in this chapter is not to give his experience
but to make clear his teaching about the relationship of the
Christian to the Law, and to show how the law can never sanctify
us any more than it could ever justify us.

So he says "God forbid" to the suggestion
that "the law is sin"; it just means that the objector has
misunderstood the entire purport of his teaching. But he does not
leave it at a mere general statement. He goes on to say,
"Nay"--"not only is that not right, but on the contrary." Such is
the force of the added expression. On the contrary, says the
Apostle, the position is not merely that I am not teaching what
your question suggests, I am teaching its exact
opposite.

In what ways is the Apostle's teaching the
very opposite of saying that "the law is sin?" He gives us two
answers.

The FIRST is, "I had not known sin but by
the law." To understand this answer it is essential that we should
again start with a negative statement, because this has been, and
can be, misunderstood. Obviously the Apostle is not saying that he
was once not aware of the fact of sin, of the fact that he had
sinned and that others had sinned. He cannot mean that, because
there are many non-Christians who are well aware that certain
things are wrong, and who say that certain things are sinful.
There is a kind of general knowledge of sin in all people, so the
Apostle could not possibly say that he had no knowledge whatsoever
of sin apart from the Law. His meaning is that he was not aware of
the real nature of sin until the Law made it clear to him. It is
the Law, he says, that brought him to a right understanding of the
essential character and nature and meaning of sin. Now this is, in
many ways, but to repeat what he had said in chapter 3, verse 20.
"Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in
his (God's) sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." His
point there was that the Law, far from justifying, can do no more
than give us a knowledge of sin. He is saying the same thing here.
It is the Law of God alone that really gives us a right conception
of the true character and nature of sin.

This is a tremendous proposition. The real
trouble with the unregenerate is that they do not know and
understand the truth about sin. They have their moral code, they
believe that certain things are right and certain things are
wrong; but that is not to understand sin. The moment a man
understands the true nature and character of sin he becomes
troubled about his soul and seeks for a Saviour. So the trouble
with people who are not seeking for a Saviour, and for salvation,
is that they do not understand the true nature of sin. It is the
peculiar function of the law to bring such an understanding to a
man's mind and conscience. That is why great evangelical preachers
three hundred years ago in the time of the Puritans, and two
hundred years ago in the time of Whitefield and others, always
engaged in what they called a preliminary "law work." In their
preaching of the Gospel they generally started with a presentation
of the Law. They knew that man would not understand salvation
unless he understood the nature of sin. So they expounded the Law
of God, showing its relevance, and by means of it they brought men
and women to an understanding of what sin really means in the
sight of God. Now nothing but the Law, says the Apostle, does
that. "Without the law" he had no real knowledge of sin. "I had
not known sin"--I would never have discovered what it really means
"were it not for the law." That is his first statement.

But he makes a SECOND statement, which
illustrates the first. "I had not known sin, but by the law: for I
had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shall not covet."
Here the "for," introduces an illustration. Says the Apostle, "I
can make plain to you what I mean when I say that apart from the
law I would never have known the real character of sin. For
instance, I would never have known the meaning of lust were it not
that the law had said, Thou shall not covet."

Here, again, is a vitally important
statement. What is the meaning of "lust?" It means coveting, "to
covet"; it means what is called "concupiscence" in verse 8. "Sin,
taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of
concupiscence." The terms means "desire after anything forbidden."
We have to be careful about the word "lust." It is actually a word
that means in and of itself simply "desire," "a strong desire."
You remember how our Lord says to the disciples, "With desire I
have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer" (Luke
22:15). The word used there is actually the word "lust." So the
word in and of itself is neutral, but the context will always make
it clear as to whether it is to be taken in a neutral sense, or in
a good sense, or in a bad sense. Usually the word "lust" is
employed in an evil sense. It means a desire, a craving for
something forbidden by God. So the Apostle is saying, "I would
never have known what lust means were it not for the law," "which
says, Thou shall not covet, Thou shalt not desire in that
way."

As for the meaning of "the law" here, Paul
doubtless meant the Ten Commandments, as they are given in the
book of Exodus, chapter 20, and particularly the tenth Commandment
which says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his
maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy
neighbour's." You must have noticed the difference between that
tenth Commandment and the others. The others say, "Thou shall not
kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shall not steal; thou
shall not bear false witness." But here there is a change--"Thou
shall not covet." At once we are introduced to the distinction
between an outward action and a happening within a man's inner
being. But we must not over-press this, because the idea of
coveting is implied in the others also.

The Apostle is really saying two separate
things. The first is, "I would not have known that lust was sin in
and of itself if the law had not taught me so." That was
undoubtedly true of the Apostle before his conversion as it was
true of all the Pharisees, they thought of sin only in terms of
external actions. As long as a man did not perform an evil act, he
was not guilty of sin. So the Apostle is saying, in the first
place, that he would never have realized that coveting, lusts,
evil thoughts and imaginations, are sin, were it not that the Law
had given him enlightenment.

Our Lord was at great pains to bring this
point home to the Jews, and especially to the Pharisees in the
Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew's Gospel, chapter 5, verse 21 to
the end of the chapter, he deals with this one great matter. The
Pharisees were teaching the people, and deceiving themselves also
to think that as long as you did not actually murder a person you
were not guilty of murder. But our Lord goes on to show them that
if you say "Raca," if you say to your brother "Thou fool," you are
already guilty of murder in your heart with respect to that
person. And he says the same with the question of adultery. They
said that as long as a man had not actually committed an act of
adultery he was not guilty of adultery. But Christ replied to
this: "If you look upon a woman to lust after her you have
committed adultery with her already in your heart, and you are
therefore guilty of adultery." They did not know that; they did
not understand the real meaning of lust. They did not realize that
lust is sinful in and of itself; so our Lord gave them these
illustrations in order to show them that their fundamental
conception of the Law was wrong, that the law is essentially
spiritual, that the Law is concerned about a man's
heart.

On another occasion when He was asked about
the Law, He said that the first, the great commandment is, "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. And the
second is like unto it, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself."
That is the Law, not just tithing mint, rue, anise and cummin, and
all the little details and minutiae. The Law, Christ says, is
spiritual, it is concerned with a man's heart and his ultimate
attitude to God. That is the meaning of the Law. Now, says the
Apostle, it was only when I really understood the meaning of the
Law that I understood the truth about lust. I came to see that to
covet is as reprehensible as to commit a deed. He had never
seen that before. It was the Law, the true understanding of the
Law, that opened his eyes to this question of lust and of
coveting.

But then the Apostle makes a second
statement with respect to the matter: "I had not known lust," he
says, "except the law had said, Thou shall not covet." The second
meaning is something like this: "I had never understood the power
of lust and of desire within me until I was really enlightened by
a true understanding of the law." Take this word "know." Notice
that he uses the word "know" twice--at least it is here in the
Authorized Version -- "I had not known sin, but by the law. I had
not known lust, except the law had said..." Here it occurs twice;
as also in most of the other translations. But in actual fact the
Apostle used a different word the second time, and I am amazed
that the translators have not concentrated on that. He does not
use the same word in the Greek in the two places. The second
"know" is much stronger than the first. It means, "to know
absolutely"; it means "to know as the result of reflection and
experience." The first indicates a kind of apprehension. Says the
Apostle, "I would never really have comprehended the meaning of
sin but by the law"; but then he adds, "I would never have
understood and come to feel in the depth of my being, and have a
full understanding and experience of the meaning of lust, and the
part lust plays in a man's life, were it not that the law had
said, Thou shalt not covet." In other words, the law had not only
brought Paul to see that to lust was to sin, it had brought him to
see the terrible power of lust in his own life. He certainly
includes that second meaning as well as the first. So the law had
rendered this great service to him. He will show us this in
greater detail in the verses which follow, but here he expresses
it in a general way. He says in effect, I really had no true
understanding of sin until the law enlightened me. I had been
oblivious of the power and the place of lust in my life until this
command about coveting arrested me, and I suddenly began to
realize the truth about myself.

Note then the Apostle's argument. You must
not say that "the law is sin," says Paul, because it is the Law
that has brought me to see the meaning of sin, and my own sinful
condition as the result of this power of lust within me. "God
forbid," he says, that anyone should think that I am teaching that
the law is something sinful or evil; I am saying the exact
opposite. Do not misunderstand me, he says in effect, the fact
that I say that the Law cannot sanctify a man does not mean to say
that I am arguing that the law is useless. The fact that I have
said that the law "aggravates" sin does not mean that the law is
sinful. No; the Law itself is excellent, and I thank God for it. I
would never have known, and had a true understanding and
apprehension of sin, were it not for the law. And, especially, I
would never have understood this matter of lusting and the place
of lusting in my life, were it not that this commandment had come
and convicted me. Such is the Apostle's argument in verse 7.
Obviously, he has not finished his explanation of his attitude to
the Law; this is but the beginning of the matter. He will go on to
work it out in greater detail.

But before we come to Paul's further
explanations let us mark this great lesson and underline it. Are
we clear in our minds that to lust after a thing is to sin? Are
we, as the Apostle says was once his case, in the position of
thinking that as long as we do not carry out a desire we have not
been guilty of sin? There are many who teach that error. For
instance, the Roman Catholic teaching is that as the result of
being baptized by the Church you are cleansed from original sin.
Then they quite logically go on to teach that to lust is not to
sin; it is only acts committed that constitute sin. That is a part
of the whole error of that particular Church with regard to
salvation.

You can sin in your imagination, in your
thought. That is as much sin, says our Lord, as the act. Obviously
there are differences in consequences, but in the sight of God the
one is sin as much as the other. Our Lord's words are, "he hath
already committed adultery with her in his heart, and "God seeth
the heart." Our Lord said to the Pharisees, "Ye are they that
justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your hearts; for
that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the
sight of God" (Luke 16:15). You Pharisees, who stand up at the
corners of the street, and in the market-place, and say, Look at
us. We have never committed murder, we have never committed
adultery. God sees your hearts, and He knows that they are black,
that they are full of sin. You have not done these things as acts
but you have done them in your hearts, in your thoughts, and in
your imaginations, and that is abomination in the sight of
God.

This is obviously crucial teaching. It is
an essential part of the Apostle's whole exposition of the great
doctrine of salvation; and it is to the extent to which we are
clear about this that we shall be able to follow his argument in
the remainder of this particular chapter. The thing that awoke the
Apostle to see his need of a Saviour from heaven was this question
of lusting. There he was convicted; but only so when he saw the
true character of the Law as essentially spiritual. Thereby he saw
the true nature of sin. In other words, there is no better way of
testing our understanding of the Christian doctrine of salvation
than to examine our understanding of the true nature of sin and
especially as regards this question of lust.

It is essential that we should be clear
about the setting and the context of the argument of the Apostle
here, because if we fail to carry this in our minds we shall
inevitably go astray when we come to the later verses and their
detailed teaching. The great principle is that Paul is showing
that the Law is not sin. Thank God it is not! Thank God it does,
and has done, what it was meant to do. It brought the Apostle to a
knowledge of sin, and especially in terms of coveting. God grant
that we all may be able to join him in saying the same thing, and
in the offering of praise and thanksgiving to God for His holy
Law, and for His work in us and upon us.

ROMANS
7:8

"But sin, taking occasion by
the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence, for
without the law sin was dead." --

Here, in this 8th verse, the Apostle
carries his argument a step further. He has made his fundamental
positive statement about the character of the Law and what it
does; then having done that he moves on. "I had not known sin, but
by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said,
Thou shalt not covet. "But" -- and here comes the explanation; and
it is a very profound explanation. Why has the law had that effect
of aggravating sin and lust in one's members? Oh, he says, the
answer is because of the nature and the character of sin. The
trouble arises not because of the Law, but because of sin. What,
then, causes sin to do this? Here is the answer "Sin, taking
occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of
concupiscence."

What does that mean? Perhaps the best way
of approaching this 8th verse is to take the various expressions
one by one, starting with the word "sin." By "sin" Paul does not
merely mean acts of sin.

Come to the next expression. "Sin," he
says, "taking occasion." Here we have a most fascinating
expression. We shall find that he uses it again in verse 11, "For
sin, taking occasion by the commandment." The root meaning of the
word translated here "taking occasion" is "to make a start from a
place." It is a word used to describe a place from which you have
set out on a journey, a starting point. "Sin, having a starting
point in the commandment." But you can also think of it in terms
of military operations, and in this sense it becomes a base in
which you make your preparations, in which you train your troops
and assemble your artillery and your armaments, and from which --
you set out upon your campaign. So we have, "Sin, making use of
the commandment as a base of operations." Or indeed, you can use
yet another idea; and some of the translators have adopted it. It
is a very interesting and picturesque one, which perhaps brings
out the meaning even better than both the others. "Sin, using the
law as a fulcrum." The meaning of the word "fulcrum" is clear. If
you are confronted by the problem of moving a great weight, a
stone or some similar object you find that in the ordinary way you
cannot move it at all. You therefore proceed to get a long bar,
the longer the better. Next you put a log of wood or something
solid on which the bar can rest fairly near the object you want to
move. You then place one end of the bar under the object, and by
pressing on the other end and using the block of wood as a fulcrum
you are able to lift and to move the weighty object which you are
anxious to move. The word rendered here as "taking occasion" was
very frequently used in that way. So we can translate it like
this: "Sin, using the law as a fulcrum, was able to move our
resistance and to produce the result that it was anxious to
produce." This wonderfully helps to bring out the idea that the
Apostle has in mind.

Here, no doubt the Apostle is referring in
particular to the Tenth Commandment with its whole idea of not
coveting--"Thou shalt not covet." Now, he says, what has happened
is that sin has taken this commandment about coveting, this
prohibition of coveting, and it has used it as a fulcrum, or a
military base of operations. To do what? "To bring to pass in me."
"it wrought in me." this word "wrought," again, is very
interesting and important; it is a very powerful word. It means
"to work powerfully," or "to bring to a firm conclusion," to
"accomplish" something. It is not a mere attempt; it meets with
success, it is a thoroughgoing operation. So we can translate it
thus, "Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought powerfully
in me"; "wrought mightily in me," "really did produce an end
result in me in this respect." It is important that we should give
the full weight to that word "wrought."

What did it bring to pass? it wrought in me
"all manner of concupiscence." What is "concupiscence?" The same
word as used by the Apostle in the previous verse, is translated
"lust." "For," he says, "I had not known sin but by the law, for I
had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet."
Concupiscence means lust, desire, in an evil sense. It means that
whole state of the heart, and of the person, in which desires,
lusts and passions are in control.

There are two statements in the book of
Genesis which put this so perfectly that nothing is necessary but
to quote them. The first is in Genesis 6:5, the description of the
people before the Flood. We are told that "every imagination of
the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually." That was
the characteristic of man in the antediluvian period. That is
concupiscence! Men were controlled and consumed by lusts and
passions and desires. Then there is a second description in
Genesis 8:21 which really says the same thing. "For the
imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." So what the
Apostle says is that sin, using the commandment as a fulcrum,
wrought mightily in him to produce all manner of such lusts and
desires. He is writing deliberately, and he says "all manner"; so
we must interpret it as such; we must not water it down. He says,
I seemed to be filled with this kind of thing, of all conceivable
types. All manner of desires and lusts were within my mind and
heart; I seemed to be nothing but a mass of corruption, and of
evil thoughts, desires and imaginations; I seemed to be a cesspool
of iniquity.

So we sum up his statement by saying that
sin used the Law as a base to produce such an effect. The very
prohibitions of the law gave sin the very opportunity it desired;
it roused it, really gave it something to work on as a fulcrum,
and it moved in that terrible and terrifying manner.

So far we have the Apostle's general
statement. But let us examine it. The first thing it tells us is
something about the nature and the character of sin. How do you
define sin, what is your notion of it? Obviously, we must not say
that sin is merely something negative. There are many who regard
and describe sin in that way. The biblical doctrine of sin is most
unpopular today. There are those who say that the old notion of
sin ought to be dismissed, that it has done much harm, that it
made people condemn themselves and feel hopeless and pessimistic.
They say that sin should not be used as a term at all, that it is
too negative, that it is psychologically bad for us because it
produces a kind of mournful person. I remember reading a sermon
once by a well-known "liberal" preacher. Most of the sermon was a
denunciation of Charles Wesley's great hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my
soul," and particularly the verse which says:

Just and holy is Thy name,

I am all unrighteousness;

Vile and full of sin I am,

Thou art full of truth and
grace.

He abominated the words. He felt it was a
disgrace, and that it should be taken out of the hymn-book and
never sung again. He tried to ridicule it by saying that when a
man is applying for a post he does not go to his prospective
employer and say, "Vile and full of sin I am."

But when you are facing God, then the whole
situation is entirely different. Such is the ridiculous position
in which people land themselves when they deny biblical truth and
doctrine.

But that is the common attitude today. They
say that we must not talk about sin as something in and of itself;
what we really mean is that there are certain things we would like
to see in a man that are not there. In other words, we must not
say that a man is a bad man, what we should say is that he is not
a good man. We must not say man is positively evil; what we should
say is that he has not yet developed to the extent he should have
done. The concept is purely negative; it merely takes note of the
absence of certain qualities, or, if they are there, they need to
be drawn out. Education and culture and training will bring them
out; but we must cease to say that people are positively evil
and--to repeat Charles Wesley's term--"vile." What is called sin,
if we want to use the term, is something which is entirely
negative, mere deprivation as it were, rather than something that
is essentially positive.

Clearly all that is something which the
Apostle Paul would reject in toto, because his whole case depends
upon this, that sin is a positive power that can use the lever,
can put the pressure on the end of the bar, and use the fulcrum.
You cannot move weights with negatives. You cannot lift weights
with a mere absence of something. No, the whole concept, the whole
picture, the very phraseology that he employs is designed to bring
out the idea that sin is positive. And not only positive, but
powerful in the extreme. It is something that can "take occasion,"
that can have "a base of operations," that can "use a fulcrum,"
that can move great objects and obstacles--it can work
powerfully.

And, of course, in saying that here, in
this picturesque way, the Apostle is simply repeating what he has
already been saying earlier in this Epistle in other language. in
chapter 5:21 he says, "Moreover the law entered, that the offence
might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
That as sin hath reigned unto death . . ." Sin is something so
powerful that it can "reign"; it is a monarch with tremendous
power. It is an empire. Then Paul says the same thing in chapter
6:14 in the words, "for sin shall not have dominion over you." It
has dominion over everyone else. Every man who is not a Christian
is under the dominion of sin. Yet people say that sin is but a
negative phase, just the absence of good qualities. It is
positive, says Paul; it is so powerful that it can move men and
throw them over. It knocked down all the patriarchs. He then uses
even stronger language in chapter 6, verses 16, 17: "Know ye not
that to whom ye yield yourselves servants (slaves) to obey, his
servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of
obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that we were the
servants of sin, but we have obeyed from the heart that form of
sound doctrine which was delivered unto you." Sin is a
slave-master, sin is that which controls people
absolutely.

There is nothing which is so foreign to the
biblical teaching than this notion that sin is entirely negative.
I will go further. Would you know how strong sin is? Well, Paul
tells us here. Sin is as powerful as this, that it can even use
God's own holy Law to its own ends. I do not know of a greater
estimate of strength and of power than this. God gave His holy law
through Moses. Ah yes, says Paul, but sin was strong; it was as
strong as this, it even used God's holy Law as a fulcrum to bring
its own purposes to pass. And it succeeded. It wrought powerfully,
it achieved, it accomplished what it wanted to do. Even God's holy
Law could not resist it. Such is the measure of the positive
character of sin, and the strength of sin. There is no doctrine,
perhaps, which is more important in a practical sense in the life
of this country and the world at this moment than just this
doctrine.

How then does sin use the Law? How does it
use the Law as a fulcrum, a base of operation, a starting point?
The first part of the answer is this; it does so by arousing in us
the element of rebellion that is in us. That is a fundamental
postulate of the Bible. Does anyone dispute it? If so, the answer
is found in the next chapter, chapter 8, verse 7: "Because the
carnal mind is enmity against God; is not subject to the law of
God, neither indeed can be." He does not say merely that we
occasionally do things that God has told us not to do. "The carnal
mind"--and that is sin in control--"is enmity against God." But
many a modern man says--I have been told it many times--"I have
always believed in God, I have always tried to worship God." But
the God they have worshipped has not been God but rather a figment
of their own imaginations. The Scripture says that the carnal
mind, is enmity against God. The Apostle repeats the same
statement in different words in the Epistle to the Ephesians,
chapters 4 and 5, and elsewhere in such expressions as, "being
enemies," and "alienated in your minds by wicked
works."

What happens is this. The Law comes and
addresses a man, and at once the antagonism to God that is within
him, the spirit of rebellion, is aroused and aggravated, and his
self-assertiveness comes into play. This is because man "in sin"
is not prepared to bow to anyone. He is self-satisfied, he is
self-contained, he is independent; and so he resents the idea of
law. That is why many people say that they do not believe in God.
They resent the idea that there is anyone to whom they must bow
the knee. They are men, twentieth-century men, who stand on their
own feet! They boast of their abilities, their wisdom and
knowledge. The natural man hates this notion that there is anyone,
even God, before whom he has to bow down and submit himself. He is
not going to be a suppliant to anyone, he wants to live his own
life in his own way. Why shouldn"t he? And so he says that the
whole notion of God is nothing but a projection of the Victorian
idea of a father. That is what the clever people, the
psychologists and others are saying. The Victorian father, the
stern Victorian father, repressed his children, he gave
commandments, and his word was law. His children had to do what he
said. Most people, they say, have projected that into infinity and
say that that is God. Of course, it is something purely
psychological! In saying all that, they are, of course, but
showing this enmity, this hatred of God, this spirit of rebellion
that is in us. So the great characteristic of an age like this,
which does not believe in God, is lawlessness, dislike of
discipline and order in any shape or form. People today have a
rooted dislike of law and of sanctions and of punishment. We have
almost reached the state in which they do not believe in punishing
anyone; a murderer almost becomes a hero who engages public
sympathy. The prisoner gets more sympathy than his victim. Thus
the whole idea of right and wrong is rapidly disappearing from the
human mind.

In essence, sin is lawlessness. It is the
rooted objection to any law, any commandment, any prohibition, any
notion of wrath and of punishment. This works itself out in
endless ways. There is no longer discipline in the home or in the
school. Children are not to be punished however much they
misbehave themselves. If they are punished the parents will soon
be demanding an interview with the head-master or the teacher and
protesting against their discipline. In New York City, I am told,
it has reached the point that no one ever fails an examination in
the schools; all are passed automatically. And for this reason,
that the teachers, the head-masters and others are afraid of the
physical consequences to themselves if they fail a pupil or a
candidate. There is soon to be an enquiry into this whole problem
of these adolescents, these juvenile delinquents in New York City
who are taking the law into their own hands. This attitude towards
anything which savours of discipline and punishment is one of the
ultimate ends of this lawlessness. The moment the natural man
hears of the Law he reacts against it and resents it. What was
already there is aggravated. And sin is the root cause. Sin was
already present; the Law comes in with its prohibition, and sin
uses it as a fulcrum and it presses down, with the result that
there is greater sin than there was before. Thus the Law
aggravates the situation because of this spirit of lawlessness
that is in us, and it actually incites us to sin.

But there is another way in which sin
works. When the Law comes to us with power, and especially when it
puts this emphasis upon not coveting and lusting, man in sin
reacts also in another way. He says, "This is going too far, this
is unfair. I am prepared to agree that there are certain things
that I should not do; and that if I do them I am wrong. That is a
matter of actions, and a man is responsible for his actions. But
now you tell me that the Law says "Thou shalt not covet," that I
am not even to desire; that if I have within myself a longing for
these things, a hankering after them even though I do not actually
engage in them, then I am guilty of sin." I am speaking here, of
course, about that which really comes out of the heart and not
about a temptation from the outside. I am taking the case of a man
who enjoys sinning in his mind, in his imagination and in his
heart, but who feels that because he has not actually committed an
outward act of sin all is well with him. When the Law comes and
says to the man "Thou shalt not covet," and tells him that to
covet is sin, there is an immediate reaction. He says, "Now this
going too far, this is an impossible standard, this is unfair to
me. It is not unreasonable as long as it stops at actions, but if
it is going to examine my thoughts and my innermost imaginations,
why, this is a sheer impossible position. I object to this. I am
willing to go on living a moral life, but my own inner life is my
own, and no outside authority shall come in there." He hates the
notion that a man's innermost thoughts are open to God, and that
evil thoughts are as reprehensible in His sight as are outward
deeds and actions. And so when the Law comes in, in that way, sin
uses it as a fulcrum and it aggravates the situation. It puts a
man into a bad temper, he is annoyed, and he feels that he is
being dealt with unfairly and unjustly; and in that state he is
going to sin more than he ever did before.

Then there is a third way in which sin
works; and this from the practical standpoint is one of the most
important of all. "Sin (using the commandment as a fulcrum)
wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." How? By putting ideas
into my mind which were not there before. The Law comes to me and
tells me not to do some particular thing; but in so doing it sets
me thinking about that thing. I was not thinking about it before,
but now I begin to do so. And as I begin to do so I begin to like
the idea; the thing appeals to me. Thus lust is kindled, I want to
do this, and I proceed to do it. The Law, by telling me not to do
it, brought it into my mind; the Law has introduced me to
it.

And not only that, but it may introduce me
to thoughts and ideas about which I was completely ignorant
before. I may be reading a book which tells me certain things, for
instance, about certain horrible perversions of which I had never
heard and which had never bothered me, or ever tempted me because
I was not aware of their existence. But I now read a book which
warns me against these things, and the moment I begin to read,
something stirs within me and my curiosity is aroused. I ask
myself, "Why do people do this? It must be pleasing, it must be
attractive." My curiosity, then begins to work and I begin to see
myself doing this. I am doing all this in my imagination and I am
enjoying it. That is how sin works.

The classic statement of all this is found
in the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, verse 15: "Unto the pure all
things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is
nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." If
your mind is defiled, everything that comes into it is going to be
defiled and twisted. Nothing will come in pure; it will have a
particular angle on it, it will be coloured by the spectacles of
your impure heart. Purity is not pure to the undefiled; the moment
it makes contact it becomes impure "But even their mind and
conscience is defiled."

Paul's argument here is that the pure Law
of God coming with its prohibitions and its restraints and its
commandments, inflames our passions, rouses within us a desire to
do the very things it prohibits, and introduces me to things I
never knew of before. What is the result of this? "It brought
forth fruit unto death." In other words the Apostle is here really
giving us an explanation of what he said in verse 5 concerning
"the motions of sin." Verse 8 throws light on verse 5. The Law of
God is not sin; it is purity itself. But it reveals to us the
nature of sin, it helps us to see that coveting is sin. What has
happened then? Oh, the terrible truth about man is that this
powerful thing called sin is able even to use that pure Law of God
as a fulcrum to produce all evil in me. It provides it with a base
of operations, the enemy "comes in as a flood," and I end by being
worse than I was before. That is the explanation, says the
Apostle.

Let us now apply this teaching, and draw
some practical help from what the Apostle is saying
here.

FIRST of all, if we are not clear as to the
nature of sin we shall never really understand the teaching of the
Bible. The whole of the biblical teaching concerning salvation is
based upon a clear understanding of what sin really is. There is
no hope of our understanding anything apart from this. We shall
never see why we have to die to the Law if we do not understand
the nature of sin. We shall never see why the Son of God had to
come and die; we shall never see the necessity of regeneration and
a rebirth. That is why so many people think that they can "decide
for Christ" as they are. How can they if this is true? This
controls everything. Most of our troubles today are due to a
failure to grasp and understand this biblical doctrine of sin.
Here in this one verse we are given a view, and an exposure of it,
such as you will scarcely find anywhere else with such clarity. It
is this terrible power that can even use God's Law as a fulcrum to
bring to pass its own nefarious ends.

In the SECOND place, what the Apostle has
said about sin, and the way in which it uses the Law as a fulcrum,
proves to the hilt his double contention. The first was that no
man can ever be sanctified by and through the Law. How can a man
be sanctified by the Law when sin is reigning in him, and can even
use that Law as a fulcrum? His second contention was that a man
never can be sanctified until his old relationship to the Law has
been abolished. He has to die to the Law and to be married to
Another before he can be sanctified, and this too he proves. As
long as sin is present, all the Law does is to provide a fulcrum
to make things worse. How can we be sanctified, therefore, while
we are "under the law?" The Apostle reduces the whole thing to an
absurdity. He is proving his contention; and he does so in a dual
sense.

If I did not know that the Son of God had
died for me and my sins, and had given me new life; if I did not
believe that I am "in Christ" and married to Him, I would be of
all men most hopeless and miserable. I cannot live a truly good
life, or practise any true morality or ethic, in my own strength
and power, because of this terrible, devastating, awful power
which is called sin.

So thank God for this 8th verse in Romans,
chapter 7, which not only illuminates the doctrine of this
particular chapter for us, but also helps us to understand
something of why life is as it is today.

The modern man does not understand the
biblical doctrine and teaching concerning sin. But as Christians
we have been enlightened; the light of truth drives us to Christ,
and makes us rejoice that we are in Him, married to Him, and that
we no longer live "in the oldness of the letter, but in the
newness of the Spirit."

ROMANS
7:9

"For without the law sin was
dead. For I was alive without the law once; but when the
commandment came, sin revived, and I died." --

The Apostle, here, is obviously continuing
what he has just been saying. The word "For" reminds us of that at
once. He is going to follow out the argument and give us a further
exposition and explication of it. So far he has been stating
facts, and showing that what he has said about the Law in verses 1
to 6 of this chapter does not mean or imply that the Law is sin
and bad and evil.

Having made those statements of fact he now
comes to an analysis of the facts. This is frequently the
Apostle's method. He makes a statement, he lays down his facts,
and then proceeds to analyse them. That is what he does here. It
is a personal statement as to what was once upon a time true of
him. It is a remarkable and very important statement because of
the terminology he uses, the way in which he puts it, and the
expressions he employs. They clearly need careful handling. If
they are taken at their face value, as it were, and out of their
context, we could easily draw conclusions which would be the exact
opposite of what the Apostle desires us to draw. Indeed we might
draw conclusions which would lead us to say that the Apostle
contradicts himself. We must therefore look at his statement with
extraordinary care.

Let us start with a general analysis of the
statement. What he is concerned to show is the difference that
what he calls "the coming of the law" made to him. He first tells
us what the position was before the Law "came" to him; sin was
dead, and he was alive. But then the Law came, and what happened?
There was a complete reversal--"sin revived, and I died." Such is
the statement we are examining--the position before the law
"came," and the position after the Law "came." In between the two
is "the coming of the law" to the Apostle.

The best way of approach to this statement
is to get clear in our minds what he means by "without the law."
"For," he says, "without the law sin was dead." Then he says, "I
was alive without the law once." What does he mean by "without the
law?" It is just here that we have to be careful. Obviously he is
using his words in a relative manner. he says, "without the law
sin was dead." "I myself was alive without the law." "Without"
means "apart from." In Scotland they often use the expression "out
with," which comes to the same thing. It means "in the absence of
law." "In the absence of the law, sin is dead." "I myself, in the
absence of law, was once alive."

But what does Paul mean by saying that
there was a time when he was "without the law?" Obviously, it must
be a relative statement, for this good reason, that there has
never been a time in the history of the human race when it has
been without law. There was even law in the Garden of Eden, and
ever since man sinned and fell he has always been "under" that
fundamental Law, the Law of God. The Apostle has proved that at
length in chapter 5. He has pointed out, for instance, that that
is the reason why "death reigned from Adam to Moses." It is the
only possible explanation of that statement. We therefore assert
that there has never been a time when there has been no law. But
if that is true in general, it was particularly true of the Jews,
and therefore true of the Apostle Paul himself. Every Jew was born
under the Law of Moses, and yet, here, he seems to say that at one
time he was alive "without the law" and lived apart from the Law.
Clearly, therefore, he must be using his terms in a relative
manner. Indeed we shall find that he does so with all the terms
that appear in this statement. What he is saying is, that as far
as his experience was concerned, he was living without the Law,
apart from the Law. In other words the Law was not really doing
its work in him; he was virtually in a position as if there was no
Law. There never was such a position, of course, but as far as his
knowledge and his experience of the Law went, that was the
position. As we look at the other terms this will become much
clearer.

Let us move to the next term, which is,
"When the commandment came, sin revived and I died." "When the
commandment came!" But the commandment had always been there! The
Law had been given through Moses long centuries before Paul was
ever born--fourteen centuries--and the basic fundamental law for
all mankind was always there from the beginning. Yet he says,
"When the commandment came." Again Paul is speaking relatively. He
means that though the commandment was there it had never "come" to
him, it had never "got" him. Let me give a very simple
illustration of what that means. People sometimes come to a
preacher at the end of a service and say, "You know, I had never
noticed that verse before," or they may say, "You know, I have
read that verse a thousand times and more, but I had never seen
it." What they really mean is that that statement had never really
"come" to them before. We have all had that experience as we read
the Bible. You are reading a verse which you have read many, many
times before, and which has said nothing to you; but suddenly it
"hits" you, suddenly it seems to be illuminated, and to stand out.
What has happened? Well, it has "come" to you. That is what the
Apostle means by "When the commandment came." It was always there,
as the Scripture was always there, but it did not "get" him, it
did not "take hold of him," it did not really speak to him. It did
not come, in other words, with power and conviction and
understanding.

This is a most remarkable statement, and
especially so as coming from the Apostle Paul. Not only was the
Law of God always confronting him, but he, as a Pharisee, was a
great expert in the Law. All his training had been directed to
that end. He was teaching others about the Law; and he prided
himself on his knowledge. But the truth was that he only had a
knowledge of the "letter," and he never understood the "spirit."
That is why he writes frequently about that distinction. Take, for
instance, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 3, where
he contrasts the letter and the spirit; he says that the whole
trouble with the Jews was that they only knew the letter of the
Law, and not its spirit. That is another way of saying the Law had
not "come" to them; it had not come with conviction, with
enlightenment, with understanding. It was a bare dead letter, it
had never "found" them, it had never really "spoken" to them, and
come in a spiritual and powerful manner.

That is the key to the parallelism in this
statement. He says in effect, "Before the law came like that to
me, this was the position." What was it? The first thing he tells
us is that before the Law had really come to him, and "got" him,
and "found" him in that new way, "sin was dead." What does that
mean? Again I must say that this is a relative statement. The
Apostle says that there was a time in his life and experience when
sin was dead. There is only one explanation; what he is really
saying is that sin was comparatively dead, that as far as his
awareness was concerned it was dead. That is what he thought; that
was his experience; that was his understanding of the situation at
the time. Sin was "lying dormant," as someone translates it. He
was not conscious of it; it was as if sin had been
dead.

Something our Lord said on one occasion
throws light on this: "A strong man armed keepeth his goods in
peace" (Luke 11:21). Here we have a perfect description of mankind
in sin and under the dominion of the devil. Notice the terms. The
devil "keeps his goods in peace." Everything seems to be very
quiet; the tyranny is so great that in a sense they are not aware
of it; there is a peaceful atmosphere. That is simply due to man's
lack of realization of what the position really is. When I was
"without the law," says Paul, I was so dull and deluded that I
thought sin was dead. Sin is never dead, sin has never been dead
since the Fall of man; but, comparatively speaking, it appeared to
be dead and lifeless.

A second illustration in modern terms will
also help us to understand the matter. The Apostle has already
told us that sin is a terrible power--so powerful that it can use
even the Law of God as a fulcrum to bring to pass its own
purposes. But Paul says that there was a time in his life and
experience when he was not aware of that power. Let us think of it
in terms of a powerful engine in a motor-car. The better, and the
more powerful the engine, the more quietly it runs or "ticks over"
when you are not moving forward. You can be sitting in your car
with its very powerful engine going; it is running but you can
scarcely hear a sound. It has great power, but you are not aware
of it because it is so silent. But then you put your foot on the
accelerator and you become aware of power. Sin is like that
engine. It was just "ticking over" as it were. Paul was not aware
that it was there and did not realize its tremendous power.
Because it was not acting in a violent manner he thought nothing
of it. As far as he was concerned, sin was dead. The power was
there, of course, but he was not aware of it--"Without the law sin
was dead."

Now let us look at another part of Paul's
relative statement. Not only does he say that at that time sin was
dead, he says also, "I was alive." That is the other part of the
double statement "For I was alive without the law once." Once
more, of course, it is a relative statement. All who have read the
first three chapters of this Epistle know that Paul has proved
there beyond any doubt that none was alive, that "all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God," that "there is none
righteous, no, not one," and that the Jews were as hopeless and as
condemned and as spiritually dead as the Gentiles. Yet, here he
is, saying "I was alive once." So he cannot mean it in an absolute
sense; everything here is relative.

The statement Paul makes in the first three
verses of the 2nd chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians proves
this. "You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and
sins." But not only was that true of the Gentiles, it was equally
true of the Jews. "Among whom also we all had our conversation in
time past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the
flesh and of the mind." Yet here the Apostle is saying that there
was a time when he was "alive once" apart from the Law.

Clearly, Paul means, that in the same way
that he thought sin was dead as far as he was concerned, he also
thought that he was alive. The moment he realized that sin was
alive he died; but as long as he did not realize that sin was
alive he thought that he himself was alive. It was all because he
had not understood the Law. In that account he was not aware of
the power of sin and of the truth about himself. He thought that
sin was dead and that he was alive. He means that he felt well, he
felt full of life, full of strength and of power. He patted
himself on the back, he was self-satisfied, he was confident, he
was congratulating himself on the wonderful way in which he was
keeping the Law. He felt full of life and vigour and confidence
and self-assurance and power; he was alive, thrilling with
vitality. That is what he is saying.

The Apostle has said this same thing in
other places in different words. For example, in the 3rd chapter
of the Epistle to the Philippians, in a wonderful bit of
autobiography, he says, "Concerning zeal, persecuting the church;
touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (verse
6). "Blameless!" He was alive; there was nothing wrong with him.
He was a wonderful specimen of a godly, religious man; he was full
of rigour and of strength in a moral sense. he says exactly the
same thing in the 1st chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians,
verse 14--"And I profited in the Jews" religion above many my
equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of "the
traditions of my fathers." There was never a man who was more
pleased with himself, more satisfied with himself, more full of
life and power. He was indeed a typical Pharisee.

At the beginning of the 18th chapter of
Luke's Gospel we meet with a similar statement in our Lord's
parable of the Pharisee and the publican who went up to the temple
to pray. No man could have been more full of the sort of life of
which the Apostle is speaking than the Pharisee depicted there by
our Lord. He starts by saying, "God, I thank thee." There is
nothing to do but to thank God. He is such a fine fellow, he fasts
twice in the week, and gives a tenth of his goods to the poor. He
is not guilty of any sins. How he thanks God that he is not like
that miserable wretch, that publican over there who is guilty of
so many sins! He does not need to ask for anything, forgiveness or
strength; and he did not ask for anything. Who that is brimming
over with health and vigour and power asks for anything? The man
is self-sufficient, autonomous, self-satisfied; so there is only
one thing to do, and that is to thank God that he is as he is. He
is alive--what a wonderful man, full of health and rigour and
strength and power! Or take the case of the rich young ruler and
his encounter with our Lord, and the Lord's handling of him. Our
Lord said to him, "You know the commandments--do not commit
adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness." The young man
replied, "All these things have I kept from my youth up, what lack
I yet?" (Matt. 19:20) He was "alive," he was aware of all that the
Law required; and he had kept it all! There was no trouble, there
was no difficulty; he was "alive."

The Apostle sums up the matter perfectly in
the 3rd verse of the 10th chapter of this Epistle, where we have
the last word about the whole contention of the Pharisees, and of
Paul himself before his conversion: "For they being ignorant of
God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the
righteousness of God." That was the trouble. They were
establishing their own righteousness, and so they thought they
were "alive" and that all was well; but they were not aware of the
real meaning of righteousness in the sight of God and as revealed
in the Law.

That, then, was Paul's position when he was
"without the law" before the commandment came sin was dead, and he
was alive. He was not aware of any real difficulty or problem, all
seemed to be perfectly satisfactory: he was "blameless." But when
the commandment "came," this whole question of coveting was
instantly illuminated. Suddenly he was arrested and apprehended by
the realization of the spiritual character of the Law, and all
that it was saying. It was a complete reversal of outlook. Sin
which was dead before, now sprang to life; he who was alive
before, now became dead. "Sin revived," he says. He means that sin
sprang to life again, it took on new life, it awoke to activity.
In terms of our illustration of the powerful engine, it suddenly
began to vibrate with power. The Law had put its foot on the
accelerator!

This, at first sight, is a most surprising
statement. We would have thought, naturally, that the effect of
the coming of the Law would have been not to "revive" sin, but to
slay it; and, indeed, in an ultimate sense, that is what it does.
But in experience it does the exact opposite--and he is writing
here in an experimental manner. In other words, what happens is
that the Law brings out the real strength and reveals the real
nature and character of sin. The Law irritates sin, disturbs it,
and by its prohibitions it arouses it; as I say, it puts its foot
on the accelerator. Or, to use a different illustration, the
Apostle is not using the picture of the fulcrum now, but rather a
picture of the way in which a resistance always brings out a
power. If you want to exercise your muscles, the best way to do so
is to start lifting weights. There is always a certain amount of
power in a muscle. It may be so little that you say that the
person is an utter weakling, and has no strength at all. But even
if small, it is there; and if you want to develop it, you have but
to start picking up weights and increasing them continually. The
greater the resistance against which you are working, the more
your muscles will develop. You can accomplish the same result by
pushing against an object; most exercises are based on this
principle. The way to bring out the power is to increase the
resistance; the more the resistance, the more it calls out your
reserves of power, the innate strength that is there in your
muscles. Something analogous to that took place when the Law
"came" to the Apostle. Without the "resistance" provided by the
Law he was not aware of the strength of sin; without this
prohibition, without this antagonist, he had never known the real
power of sin within himself. When the Law came powerfully and told
him that he must not covet what he could not rightfully have, he
suddenly felt an overwhelming desire for such things.

What the Apostle teaches here is
fundamental to the whole biblical teaching concerning sin. Take
another statement which is a very close parallel to this, and
which helps to throw light on it. In John's Gospel chapter 15,
verses 22 and 24, our Lord says, "If I had not come and spoken
unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for
their sin," and "If I had not done among them the works which none
other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen
and hated both me and my Father." Take it on its face value and
our Lord seems to be saying, "If I had not come into the world
these people would not have had sin." But we know that they were
all sinners, all condemned, all "dead in trespasses and sins." He
is actually saying exactly the same thing as Paul is saying here,
namely, that the effect of His coming has been to expose the sins.
Of course they were sinners before; but there was a sense in which
they did not appear to be sinners; it was not obvious that they
were so until He came. But the moment He began to speak, the
moment He began to do works among them that no other man had ever
done, or could do, then the malignity and the spite and the hatred
and the malice that was latent in them became manifest and
open.

Who would ever have understood the truth
about the Pharisees if our Lord had not come and spoken to them?
Look at them apart from Him. One would tend to say, "They are very
good men, they are wonderfully moral." The Pharisee in our Lord's
parable to which we have referred is not lying, he is speaking the
truth. He did fast twice in the week, he did give a tenth of his
goods to the poor. So looking at them apart from our Lord, you
would have said, What noble, excellent men, what wonderful
observers of the Law! It is only when you see their reaction to
the Son of God that you really get to know the Pharisees. Look at
their bitterness, their hatred; see their subtlety and their
cleverness; watch them as they whisper together and conspire and
weave a plot, and try to trip Him and to trap Him by putting their
catch questions and their leading questions. What evil and sin
there was inside the Pharisees! But we would never have known it
if the Lord had not come and spoken to them. He drew it out, as it
were, he convicted them of sin; it is their reaction to Him that
shows what they really were. Once they came up against Him, all
this suddenly came to light. You could now see it in their faces
and in their whole demeanour and behaviour. It is a perfect
illustration of what the Apostle says in this statement we are
examining. "When the commandment came," he says, "and found me,
sin sprang up to life again within me."

But that in turn led to this other result
"I died." This man who was so much alive now dies. It is, as I
have said, the same sort of relative terminology; but it is
important that we should be clear as to what exactly he means when
he says that he "died" as the result of the coming of the law. He
does not mean here, primarily, that he was aware of his
condemnation. That is true, of course; he died in the sense that
he saw that the Law condemned him before God; but that is not what
he is emphasizing here. Here he is dealing with his case in a much
more experimental and practical way. What he means is, that he was
now the opposite of what he was when he was "alive." Clearly the
parallelism demands that. So we interpret "l died" by "I was
alive"; and it means that he died in the sense in which we read of
certain characters in the Bible that when they heard certain
things it had a terrifying effect upon them. Of Nabal, for
example, we read that when he heard a certain statement he "became
as one dead," even though he remained alive physically. We say "I
was petrified," or "It almost killed me." That is what Paul
means--"I became as a dead man."

In other words he realized his weakness,
his helplessness, and his hopelessness. The man who was so sure of
himself before, felt as if he was dead. There was nothing there,
self-confidence had gone, self-satisfaction disappeared,
self-reliance had utterly vanished.

A good way of putting this is to say that
he means, "I became poor in spirit," as the first beatitude in the
Sermon on the Mount puts it (Matthew 5: 3). A man who is poor in
spirit is a lifeless man. The man who is "alive" is a man who is
full of spirit and of power and confidence. We say, "there is a
great spirit in that man." But the true Christian becomes "poor in
spirit"; he says, "Who am I and what can I do?" He is not only
poor in spirit, he also mourns. He was not mourning before; he was
boasting. But he is now mourning because of his sin; he is
troubled and unhappy. He has now had such a view of the Law that
he feels he can do nothing, he is exactly as if he were dead. He
sees the holiness of God and the holiness of the Law; he also has
a sight of the terrible evil that is within himself. He sees what
it is doing to him, how it is breaking him down and defeating him;
and so he begins to feel that he can do nothing whatsoever, that
he is weak and helpless, that he is poor and blind, that he has
nothing at all. He sees that he is utterly without strength and
without rigour and life and power.

That is what the Apostle means by saying
that he "died." The moment this illumination came in as to the Law
and its spiritual character and its prohibitions, especially of
coveting, that is what happened. He began to experience the
"terrible power of sin creating within him "all manner of
covetousness," and it knocked him down. He realized that he was an
utter weakling--he who had been boasting of himself as being
superior to all his contemporaries and so superior to them in his
knowledge of the Law. He now saw that he had nothing at all, and
that his righteousness was nothing but "dung" and dross and
refuse. He had been going about to establish his own
righteousness, but when faced with the righteousness of God he
found that he possessed nothing. That, he tells us, is what he
realized about himself when the commandment really "came" to him
and found him and laid him low. He could not move; in a spiritual
and moral sense, he was lying helpless on his back, as he had done
in a physical sense on the road to Damascus. He was absolutely
without strength. We have already been given the key to the
understanding of this expression in the 5th chapter, verse 6:
"When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for
the ungodly."" To be "without strength" is to be like a dead man.
There is no life, no rigour, no power; in fact nothing of value at
all.

Here we come to the end of the Apostle's
statement. What has he established, what has he proved? And what
are our reactions?

Our conclusions fall into two groups. The
first is the particular conclusion that is essential to the
Apostle's argument here. It is, that he has established once more
that the Law can never justify a man, still less sanctify him.
That is what he set out to prove--that no man can ever be
sanctified by the deeds of the Law, can ever sanctify himself by
performing the deeds of the Law. Indeed he is concerned to prove
more than that. Not only can we not be sanctified by the Law,
there is only one hope of our ever being sanctified, and that is,
we must be set free altogether from the Law, in the same way as a
woman is freed from her husband who has died. While we are "under
the law" it will simply produce more sin in us, and will reveal
our deadness to us, our utter hopelessness. So our only hope of
sanctification is to be set free from the Law. Paul has proved it
once more. The Law cannot deliver us; the Law kills us, it makes
us as dead men, for the reasons he has been giving.

That is the conclusion germane to the
particular argument the Apostle is deploying in this section of
the Epistle. But we must draw some further general conclusions
which will be of value to us in our daily life and living, which
will be indeed of supreme value to us in determining and
discovering whether we are Christians or not. The first is that
our spiritual health, our spiritual condition--in other words, on
the negative side, our sinfulness is never to be judged only in
terms of actions but always in terms of our reactions to God's
holiness and to God's Law. That, to me, is one of the fundamental
postulates of the Christian faith. It should always be an
essential preliminary in evangelism. A man's spiritual state and
condition must not be determined in terms of actions only. To do
so would mean that there is nothing wrong with the Pharisee, and
that he does not need the gospel. He fasts twice in the week, he
gives a tenth of his goods to the poor; he never committed
adultery, and has never committed murder. He does not need
forgiveness. That is why this type of good, moral man goes to an
evangelistic meeting feeling that it has no message for him and
that his duty is to pray for the conversion of the "sinners" in
the meeting. He does not feel guilty because he thinks of sin and
sinners in terms of particular actions. Our churches are as they
are because they contain so many people of this type, people who
do not know that they are sinners because they judge sin only in
terms of particular actions.

The way to judge and to estimate sin in
yourself is to note your reaction to the biblical teaching about
God in His holiness, and God as Judge eternal. Or think of it in
this way--What is your reaction to the true preaching of the
Cross? The message of that Cross is that we are all so damned and
lost that nothing but that death could save us. "What," says many
a highly moral person, "do you mean to say that I am in the same
position as the prostitute or the drunkard or the murderer?"
"Precisely," says the message of the Cross, "you need salvation as
much as they do." Hence "the offence of the Cross." In other
words, What is your reaction to the Lord Jesus Christ? Is it the
reaction of the Pharisee? He annoyed the Pharisees by telling them
that He had come into the world because they needed to be saved as
much as all others, that they could only be saved by His dying for
them. They, the great teachers, they who were "alive," they who
had "kept" the Law and had "done all these things from their youth
up" needed to be saved! And they hated Him accordingly. That is
how you measure sin.

I repeat that there is nothing more
misleading than to estimate sinfulness or our spiritual condition
in terms of actions only. Actions are so varied. Go back again to
my illustration. If you are going to judge the power of a motor
car only by the silence of the engine when it is not moving you
would be altogether wrong. That is not the way to test it. The way
to test it is to confront it with a mountain or a gradient of one
in three; then you will discover something of the power of your
engine. The measure of our sinfulness is the measure of our
resistance to the holiness of God, and the Ten Commandments and
the Moral Law, the Sermon on the Mount and to the Person of the
Lord Jesus Christ. In this way, and in no other, we begin to see
the whole deceitful element in sin which we shall consider more
clearly later.

ROMANS
7:10,11

"And the commandment, which was
ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking
occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew
me." --

In these words the Apostle Paul continues
the tremendously important statement with regard to the character
and the function and the purpose of the Law. As we have already
seen, it is a subject which is in every way essential to a true
understanding of the gospel; and not only before we become
Christians, but equally so afterwards, for not only is there no
justification by the Law, but also no sanctification by the
Law.

In these verses 10 and 11, Paul sums up
what he has been saying in detail in the previous verses where he
has told us that he was "alive" and that sin was apparently dead
until the Law "came," and how then sin revived and he "died." He
does so by saying "that the commandment which was ordained to
life, I found to be unto death."

Again, the terms used are to be carefully
noted. Look first at the expression "I found." Paul does not mean
that as the result of careful study and examination he reached a
certain conclusion. It sounds as if he was saying that, but it is
not so. What he is really saying is that "the commandment, which
was ordained to life, was found in my case to be unto death." That
is a better way of translating it. In other words, the "finding"
is not the result of his investigation; it was something he
discovered as the result of the coming of the Law to him, and the
consequences that followed.

Look next at the statement, "The
commandment which was ordained to life." All careful students of
Scripture must at once feel rather surprised at these words, for
the Apostle has devoted the early chapters of this Epistle to
proving that there is no such thing as finding "life" by the Law.
For instance, he summed up his great argument in the 20th verse of
chapter 3 by saying, "Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no
flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge
of sin." That means that no one can ever find life by the Law,
that the whole tragedy and fallacy of the Jews was that they were
seeking life by the Law. Yet here he seems to contradict himself
completely by saying that the commandment "was ordained to
life."

How do we face this problem? Let us first
look at it in a very general way in the whole context of
scriptural interpretation. We start by saying that obviously it
cannot have its face meaning and value, otherwise it involves the
Apostle in a blank contradiction of himself. Not only so, if it
meant that, he would be undermining everything that he has been
saying and establishing. So we cannot possibly read the words
superficially. There we have a good principle which can always be
applied. If the apparent meaning, the first meaning that suggests
itself to you, is in obvious contradiction to some plain teaching
of the Scripture it cannot be the truth and therefore you will
have to seek for another explanation.

What, then, do the words mean? Clearly
this, not that the commandment was given in order that people
through it might obtain life, but that if men and women had kept
the commandment, then it would have led to "life." This is so for
the reason that the commandment, as Paul is about to tell us, is
"holy, and just, and good." The commandment, after all, is the
most perfect indication of the way of holiness and of happiness
that has ever been given. When He gave the "commandment," the Law,
the Moral Law, God was outlining a way of life which would be well
pleasing in His sight. It is the way of life, and that is what the
Apostle says about it at this point. Here is God's Law which
teaches us what the holy and the happy life really is, the life
that is pleasing to God.

Let me show from other scriptures that that
is the meaning. Take, for instance, what the Apostle says later in
chapter 10, verse 5: "Moses describeth the righteousness which is
of the law (in this way), That the man which doeth those things
shall live by them." That means that when Moses gave the Law he
said to the people in effect, "If you keep this law you will have
life, eternal life." Yes, "if" you do! Or take Exodus, chapter 19,
verse 5. When God spoke to Moses about the giving of the law to
the people he said; "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice
indeed, and keep my commandments, then ye shall be a peculiar
treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And
ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation." But
we notice the "if" again. The promise is conditional. Or take it
as it is expressed in the Book of Leviticus, chapter 18, verse 5:
"Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a
man do, he shall live in them." That is what Paul quotes in the
10th chapter of Romans, verse 5. Or read the same thing again in
Deuteronomy 6:25; "And it shall be our righteousness," says Moses
to the people, "if we observe to do all these commandments before
the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us." But we have still
higher authority for our interpretation, namely, our Lord Himself.
In chapter 10 of the Gospel according to St. Luke there is an
account of an interview between a certain lawyer and our Lord
about how to inherit eternal life. Our Lord said to this man,
"What is written in the law? how readest thou?" "And he answering
said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy
mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." And our Lord said to him,
"Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live." There it
is clearly! "The commandment was ordained unto life." But you
notice again that the promise is conditioned upon
performance--"This do, and thou shalt live."

There are, however, other statements which
deal still more directly with the meaning of this phrase. The
Apostle says quite explicitly in Galatians 3:21: "If there had
been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness
should have been by the law." That is enough in and of itself to
show what the Apostle does not mean by this statement which we are
examining.

What then is the truth about the Law? It is
that the Law is the perfect expression of what it is necessary for
a man to do if he is to obtain life in that way. But, as Paul will
tell us again in chapter 8, verse 3: "What the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh"--that is the
explanation!--"God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit."

We need not stumble therefore over the
particular phrase, "the law which was ordained unto
life."

That brings us to the next statement. "The
commandment which was ordained to life, was found in my case to
lead unto death." We need not stay with this. In a sense we have
already been dealing with it. It is just another way of saying
that this is what happened when the commandment had really "come"
to him"-- "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." In
other words, the Apostle says that the Law, far from giving life
and happiness and holiness and joy, did the opposite. It condemned
him, it showed him his failure, it inflamed sin within him, and
therefore revealed to him his utter helplessness, and left him in
a state of complete misery.

But why did it happen in the Apostle's
case, that the Law which was ordained unto life was found to be
unto death? The answer is--as he has been telling us already, and
as he will tell us further in the next verse--that it was all
because of sin, and because of what sin does with the Law, and did
with the Law in his case, as in the case of the Pharisees and the
Jews. We can sum it up by pointing to what he will say later in
chapter 9, verses 31 and 32: "But Israel, which followed after the
law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of
righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but
as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that
stumbling stone." The trouble, the "stumbling stone," was that
they did not make the right use of the Law. Sin so affected them
that, though this Law of God had been given to them, they made the
wrong use of it; they used it as a "way of
righteousness."

In his First Epistle to Timothy, chapter 1,
verse 8, the Apostle makes a very illuminating statement which
throws light on what he is saying here. "We know," he says, "that
the law is good, if a man use it lawfully." The Law is good on
condition that you use it in the right way. The fact is, however,
that because of sin we do not use it lawfully. And that is why he
found in his case, as he says, that the commandment which was
ordained unto life he found to be unto death.

The Apostle is virtually saying here what
he says in 1 Corinthians 15:56: "The sting of death is sin, and
the strength of sin is the law." "The sting of death," the thing
that really kills in death, is sin. Sin makes death what it is,
and that which puts power into the sting is the Law. We have
already been considering some of the ways in which sin does just
that. We saw how it increases lust and passion--concupiscence and
how it inflames the passions; and how, in addition, it leads to
failure and misery and condemnation. So the Apostle will be fully
justified when he comes to verse 2 in chapter 8, and sums up all
that he has been saying in chapter 7 in the words: "For the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free." From what?
From that law which he now describes as "the law of sin and
death." The commandment which was ordained unto life, had become a
commandment, a law "of sin and death." It aggravates sin and
therefore leads to death still more certainly. There he actually
refers to this Law of God as "a law of sin and death," because
that is exactly what it is to the whole of the human race as the
result of sin.

We now turn to verse 11 which is an
explanation of verse 10. How careful Paul is in his method!
"For"--He throws out his statement first in a general way--"the
commandment which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto
death." But how? "For" here is the answer--"For sin, taking
occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me." Why
does the Apostle continue to repeat his explanations? Why does he
keep on saying the same thing in different ways? I can but repeat
my previous answer, namely, that the biblical doctrine of sin is
absolutely crucial to an understanding of the biblical doctrine of
salvation. Whatever we may think, we cannot be right and clear
about the way of salvation unless we are right and clear about
sin. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Apostle is so much
concerned about this foundation principle. Looking back across his
own life he sees that the whole explanation of his condition was
that he had been for so long in a state of blindness and ignorance
about the Law and sin, and therefore about himself. And he knew
that that appeared to be the case with some of those to whom he
was writing, he knew that it was still the case with all the Jews.
So he is much concerned to make this very clear.

So he says it once more--"For sin . . . "
Sin is the trouble. He has already been showing something of what
sin does. "But sin," he said in verse 8, "taking occasion by the
commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." Here he
says, "For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me."
They are both statements as to what sin does in this terrible way.
But it is not mere repetition; there is, as we shall see, an
addition to the thought also.

Let me again emphasize the importance of
the Apostle's repetition. This is still one of the greatest causes
of trouble with regard to salvation. There are many outside the
Kingdom of God solely for this reason, that they have never
understood the meaning of the Law, and what sin does with the Law.
It is one of the commonest stumbling-blocks still, standing
between people and salvation.

There is only one explanation of the moral
state of society, it is this terrible power which the Bible calls
"sin." Men in their cleverness and sophistication no longer
believe in sin. They have been trying to explain it away in terms
of psychology, saying that it is non-existent.

But now the Apostle adds something further.
In verse 8 he told us that sin "wrought" in him. There, as we saw,
he was emphasizing the "power" of sin. We have dwelt on that
because it is, next to God, the greatest power in the universe.
But here he is emphasizing another element in sin, its
"deceitfulness." "Sin, taking occasion by the commandment,
deceived me." This translation is not quite strong enough. The
Apostle used a very emphatic word here. He said, "Sin, taking
occasion by the commandment, completely deceived me." It "took me
in" completely. Not in a slight way, it took me in altogether, it
deceived me absolutely. Such is the meaning of the word used by
the Apostle. We must therefore realize that sin is not only
terribly powerful, but at the same time terribly deceiving. How
can anyone fail to see this? The Bible is full of this
teaching.

Let me emphasize this point by some further
quotations. I am taking no risks because people are so much
influenced by what they read, and by the popular psychology. Even
Christian people do not seem to believe the biblical doctrine
concerning sin any longer. But not to believe it is ultimately to
deny the whole Bible.

I start with Genesis 3:13; "And the Lord
God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the
woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." The first
verse in that chapter has already said, "The serpent was more
subtle than all the beasts of the field." The Apostle Paul in
chapter 11, verse 3, of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians,
takes it up and says: "But I fear, lest by any means, as the
serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be
corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." Again he says in
chapter 4, verse 22 of his Epistle to the Ephesians; "I exhort you
that you put off concerning the former conversation the old man,
which is corrupt through the deceitful lusts." In chapter 3, verse
13 of the Epistle to the Hebrews we have: "But exhort one another
daily, while it is called today; lest any of you be hardened
through the deceitfulness of sin."

These various scriptural quotations
emphasize what the Apostle says here in chapter 7 of Romans, that
sin is not only powerful but subtle and deceitful, that it deludes
us, beguiles us, and misleads us. It is because this is true of
sin that all of us sin. It explains why there is so much sin in
the world, and why sin continues in the world. Sin continues in
spite of the knowledge that we have with regard to its effects and
results. Men can read books which show and prove the evil effects
of alcohol, yet they go on drinking it. People can read books
which show the evil effects of certain acts of immorality and
uncleanness, yet men and women still go on doing these things.
They have the knowledge, but they still go on in the practice of
sin. Sin continues in spite of our experience of remorse and
sorrow and pain and suffering after we have committed it. We still
continue sinning, though the whole record of history and of
biography is there staring us in the face showing us the
consequences of sin.

In spite of it all sin continues, and sin
abounds; and all because it is its nature to deceive us. "Sin
taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me." How did it do
so? How does it still do so? How does sin use the Law of God to
deceive us? How is it that "the strength of sin is the law?" I
would classify the answers in the following way. First, sin
deceives us into mis-using the Law. I take my statement from Paul
in his First Epistle to Timothy (1:8): "The law is good, if a man
use it lawfully." Ah yes, but sin comes in and it makes us use it
unlawfully.

It persuades us to believe that if we have
not performed an actual evil deed we remain free from sin. Nothing
matters except a man's actions. As long as I am not committing
those actions I am keeping the Law, and I am therefore justifying
myself in the sight of God. "Sin deceived me," says Paul, and it
did so in that way. Paul was quite convinced, as we have seen in
the Epistle to the Philippians, and in other Epistles, that he was
really keeping the Law, and that "touching the righteousness of
the law, he was blameless." He thought he was doing really well,
he was "alive without the law once." Sin had deceived him by
taking the commandment and saying, "Ah yes, the commandment means
that as long as you do certain things and refrain from others you
will be right with God." And he believed the deceit and acted
accordingly. Not a word about coveting, of course! And so sin
deceived him into misusing the Law.

But sin also works in another way. When we
fall into sin, and our consciences begin to speak strongly and to
remind us of the Law and its dictates, then sin changes its
tactics completely. It now comes to us and says, "Yes, that is
right; you have sinned, you have failed; remember that the "law of
God is holy and just and good" and you have now broken it. You are
in a completely hopeless position." Then the next step is that we
say to ourselves, "Because I have failed and am hopeless there is
no point in trying any further. Having sinned once I might as well
sin again. I will be no worse, for I am already hopeless." So we
sin the second, and the third, and the tenth, and the thousandth
time. That is how sin comes to us. Having depressed us, it
persuades us that what we do no longer matters. That is a further
misuse of the Law.

Another method used by sin--and this is one
of the most terrible of all--is "antinomianism." I have made
mention of it previously. It works in this way. We have sinned and
we are conscious of having broken the law. Then sin, coming as "an
angel of light," says, "You have sinned and have broken the law,
but don"t be troubled. Realize that "where sin abounded, grace
hath much more abounded." You have nothing to worry about at all.
The more you are conscious of your sin, the more grace increases,
and in a sense, the more you sin the more grace operates in your
case. You are a saved man, you are "under grace," so what you do
no longer matters." Antinomianism is one of the most blinding
curses that has ever afflicted the life of the Church. It troubled
the early Church, and it has continued to do so ever since. Men,
taking the letter of the doctrine of justification, and the
"letter of the law" twist them to say that our actions no longer
matter because we are now under grace; we can continue in sin
because we are no longer "under the law" but "under grace." Thus
the deceitfulness of sin makes us misuse and mishandle the
Law.

Sin also deceives us by creating within us
an antagonism to the Law; it makes us feel that God is against us.
That is what the devil did with Eve. "Hath God said?" "Yes, He is
against you." The moment the Law begins to speak, sin always comes
in at that point and says, "Yes, that is exactly what it does say,
and that is because God is what He is--He is against you, a stern,
feelingless Lawgiver."

But sin does not stop at that. It also
makes us feel that the Law is unreasonable in its demands upon us,
that it is unjust. The Law is made to appear narrow and cramped,
prohibiting everything you like, and urging upon us things we do
not like. The Law of God, says sin, is unjust, is impossible, is
unfair; it asks of us something that no man can ever do. So sin
persuades us to hate it; and because of our bitterness and hatred
against it, when it tells us not to do something it creates within
us the desire to do it.

Another manifestation of the subtlety of
sin is the way in which it deceives us about ourselves. In a very
subtle way sin comes to us and fawns upon us and praises us; it
makes us think very highly of ourselves. It asks why we should be
held down under the Law? As the devil put it to Eve, "Has God said
you are not to eat of that fruit?" In other words, "Why did He set
that limit? Why should you be deprived of what is desirable? Why
should there be a limit to what you may do? It is an insult to
your human nature. You were meant for freedom; God is against you.
Assert yourself, live your own life; you are able to look after
yourself and to govern your own life." The devil still does that,
and persuades us of our right to freedom and self-determination.
He convinces man that he is autonomous, able to govern himself and
his world, and does not need anything outside himself. O the
subtle deceitfulness of it all!

Another expression of this subtlety is
particularly common at the present time. The Law comes to us and
prohibits certain things. "Yes," says the devil, "and that is
where, again, it is obviously against you; because it is telling
you not to use the powers and faculties that you have within you.
You have certain instincts, you have certain impulses and drives
within you. Obviously they are there for some good purpose, they
are good in and of themselves. So why do you not use them?" That
is the popular teaching today. We are told that we should never
have a feeling of guilt; that that is Victorianism and Biblicism,
the Old Testament. We must never talk about sin, and never have a
feeling of guilt because that violates our personality. One of the
most popular manifestations of the modern mind is the cult of
"self-expression" which says, Let your instincts govern you, do
what you feel like doing; give full expression to your innate
powers. They are never to be repressed. That leads to
unhealthiness and unhappiness. Many psychiatrists in treating
their patients actually encourage them to do things which are
prohibited in the Bible. They tell them that their trouble is due
to the fact they have repressed their personality as the result of
accepting the biblical doctrine of sin. Sin in its subtlety thus
deceives people by praising them, and by getting them to express
themselves and their evil.

Finally, sin deceives us about itself. It
does so by making sin very attractive. We read that Eve "saw that
the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes"
and she believed that it would make her wise if she took of it
(Gen. 3:6). How extraordinary it was that God should prohibit the
eating of such pleasant, perfectly formed fruit, with its
beautiful colour and all else. No doubt the taste would be equally
wonderful. The finest fruit in the Garden; and yet God prohibits
it! "Sin deceived me," says Paul, and it still deceives by making
sin very attractive. The Christian life is made to look very drab;
but how wonderful the world looks. Look at the lights of London
and of Paris and New York. Look at the smiling, laughing throngs,
the beautiful dresses, the bright eyes. Of course you must not ask
how all that is produced and to what it leads. You must not talk
about the drugs or the alcohol such people have been taking, and
all the heart-break after they go home or the next day. No, no!
But look at it; does it not seem wonderful? A man comes up from
the country, and seeing life in London he says, "Why, I haven"t
been living, this is life, it is marvellous. How attractive, how
beautiful, how pleasant to look upon, how good it must be!" He
reads thrilling reports of it in the newspapers and hears people
praising it and talking about it and recommending it. All are
saying, "This is real life; This is what the great and the famous
and the illustrious people really do. How wonderful!" It all
appears so attractive, so seductive, so interesting, so big, so
noble, so free, by contrast with the godly, biblical, Christian
life.

It deceives us further by discouraging any
thoughts about consequences; it ridicules them. Do you remember
what the devil said to Eve? "Did God say that if you eat of this
fruit you will certainly die?" Then he said, "You will not surely
die." Note the dogmatism. Yet they did die. But the devil with the
utmost dogmatism and assurance said, "You will not surely die."
And Peter reminds us in his Second Epistle that the godless are
always saying the same thing. "Where is the promise of His
coming?" You preachers are threatening retribution and punishment
and disaster; but you have been doing it for centuries, and yet
the world stands as it has always stood. "Where is the promise of
His coming?" (2 Peter 3:1-11).

Sin deceives us about results and ends; it
assures us that nothing unpleasant is going to happen. It hates
all punishment, it hates the very idea of retribution. The popular
and prevailing teaching today says that you must never punish,
that the purpose of prisons is solely to reform and rehabilitate.
That is what leads to the present chaos in prison life, indeed in
the whole of life. This is part of the seduction of sin, the
deceivableness of sin which discourages any idea of justice and
righteousness and of punishment; and, of course, supremely, any
idea about hell.

Hell is just unthinkable to the modern
mind. No intelligent person ever talks about hell, we are told; no
decent person talks about hell. It is ridiculed and dismissed as
being totally incompatible with a God of love. That is how sin
speaks. Sin, as an angel of light, talks much about the love of
God. It will talk about anything in order to get you to close your
eyes to the consequences of your actions, and the end to which
they lead, and especially to the death, the eternal death, in
which they are going to issue.

To see the deceivableness and the
deceitfulness of sin at its very zenith, listen to what it says
about the Cross of Christ on Calvary's hill. Alas! how often is
false doctrine heard in so-called Christian pulpits! Preachers
say, "What is the meaning of that death, that Cross? It is nothing
but a great exhibition, a tableau, of the love of God. Do not talk
about the righteousness and the justice of God. Do not talk about
the wrath of God, do not talk about propitiation. It is all love;
there is no punishment. God is a God of love; so live as you like;
all will go to heaven at the end." That is how sin talks in its
deceivableness and deceitfulness. Universalism! All are going to
be saved; there is no division of mankind into the "saved" and the
"lost." That is how sin deceives us by giving us one side of the
picture only.

Sin does this work, as Paul says in
Ephesians 4:17, by "darkening our understanding." It prevents our
thinking clearly, it misrepresents everything; it gives us
rose-tinted spectacles; it perverts everything, changes
everything, transforms everything. Even the devil, as Paul says,
can transform himself into a veritable "angel of light" (2
Corinthians 11:14). So sin deceived Paul, made use of the Law to
deceive him, and by it knocked him down, killed him, took the life
out of him, made him to see he was utterly hopeless and doomed and
damned. Sin always does that. As James says in the 1st chapter of
his Epistle in verse 15, "Then when lust hath conceived, it
bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death."

"The commandment, which was ordained unto
life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, deceived me, and by it (the Law of God) slew
me."

ROMANS
7:12,13.

"Wherefore the law is holy, and
the commandment holy, and just, and good.

"Was then that which is good made
death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin,
working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful." --

The Apostle here is obviously summing up,
and bringing to a conclusion, the argument he has been developing
in the previous verses. In a sense he has been stating, so far,
what he had found in experience. His real purpose is to deal with
the question put in verse 7: "What shall we say then? Is the law
sin?" He has to make clear that what he had previously said,
especially in verse 5, does not mean that "the law is sin." It
might look like that, he says, at first sight; but the moment you
examine the situation it is clear that the trouble is not in the
Law but in sin, and the use that sin has made even of the Law of
God. He had ended by saying that what sin really does is to take
advantage of the commandment, and to use it as a base of
operations, and so it had deceived him, and as a result it "slew"
him.

Thus he has stated what he has discovered
in his experience. That is the statement of verse 10. "The
commandment, which was ordained to life, was found by me to be,
or, was found in my case to be, unto death." That was his
preliminary summing up, as it were. Verse 11 explains how that had
happened, especially emphasizing the element of deceit. And now he
brings it all to a head and says, "Wherefore"--in the light of all
I have been saying "the law itself is holy, and the commandment
holy, and just, and good." In other words, he is saying, "This
charge should never be proffered against me, that I am teaching
that the Law is evil, that the Law is sin, because everything I
have been saying really asserts the exact opposite." What he
really believes about the Law is that it is "holy," and the
commandment "holy, and just, and good."

Notice that he refers to the "law" and the
"commandment." There has been much discussion as to why he does
this. I find myself in agreement with those who say that he uses
the variation in order to emphasize his point. He is really
speaking about the whole law. "The commandment" may well mean the
Tenth Commandment in particular--the commandment which says "Thou
shalt not covet"--but it is equally true, of course, of all the
other commandments. So in effect he is saying that "the law," and
indeed every part of it, every individual detailed commandment,
"the law," general and particular, is "holy, and just, and good."
The Apostle was obviously very much concerned to say this and to
make it abundantly clear. After all, he was a Jew; and he had been
brought up as a Pharisee. He had spent the whole of his life as a
Pharisee in studying the Law. Not only that, he has a great burden
in his heart, as he tells us in chapter 9, for his
fellow-countrymen. The last thing he wants to do is to offend
them, or to have any misunderstanding whatsoever with regard to
his view of the Law. The Law is the Law of God, and therefore it
is important that he should make perfectly clear what he really
does think about it.

Now let us look at his terms.

1. He says, "the law is holy." To be "holy"
means that it is the absolute antithesis of sin and evil. The
charge brought against him is that he is saying that "the law is
sin." So he says, "Far from saying that the law is sin, I am
saying the exact opposite, that it is holy." Holiness means
separation, and especially from sin and evil. So when he says that
"the law is holy" he is using the strongest term possible to show
that it is as far removed as is conceivable from sin or
evil.

Or look at the matter in the following way.
"The law is holy." Of course it must be, it cannot help being so,
for it is an expression of God's character. It is the function of
the Law to give us a revelation of God, and His being and His
character, in order that we may learn what we have to be, and to
become, in order to have communion and fellowship with Him. Now
the fundamental statement which the Bible makes everywhere about
God is that "God is holy." So the commandment, the whole of the
Law, can be summed up, in a sense, in this way, "Be ye holy, for
(because) I am holy." The Law is a kind of transcript of the
character of God; it is a perfect expression of His will. The Law,
therefore, is holy in the sense that it not only reveals to us the
character of God, and what our character should therefore be, but
it also holds us to that revelation. That, then, is Paul's first
term, a most important term for us to remember.

2. Then, in the second place, Paul says
that the Law is also "just." Here, again, is something to which we
should pay the most diligent attention, because, as we have seen
in our detailed examination of this section, sin in its
deceitfulness is always trying to persuade us that the demands of
the Law are unjust, unfair, and indeed impossible. As we have
seen, that is one of the ways in which the deceitfulness of sin
manifests itself. So Paul is concerned to emphasize that he had
never said that the Law was unjust. His teaching is that the Law
itself is absolutely just. It is just and right in what it demands
of us; it makes no unfair demands of us whatsoever. There is
nothing unfair to man in the Ten Commandments. It is all just, it
is all perfectly fair. So the specious argument that was being
brought forward cannot stand examination for a moment. The Law of
God in all its demands is essentially righteous and absolutely
just. Not only so; it is just in another sense. It is perfectly
just, and justified, in the pronouncement and the sentence that it
passes upon all sin or transgression, and on all failure to honour
its requirements and to keep them. No man at the bar of final
judgment will be able to say that any unjust demand was made of
him, or that the Law is in any way unjust in punishing him. The
Law has been given, and is plain and clear; it has told us what
will happen if we do not obey it. So if we do not obey we must not
grumble and complain when the Law exacts its penalty.

This is well illustrated in the case of
Adam and Eve. They were given a law, and they were told exactly
what would happen to them if they broke it. Then when they did
break it, and sinned and rebelled against God, they had no right
to complain when they were driven out of the Garden; for they had
been warned that sin would have sad consequences. So the Law is
perfectly just when it exacts its penalty. It is neither an
excessive penalty, nor an unjust penalty; it is strictly just and
righteous.

3. That bring us to the third term, "the
commandment is good"--it is just, it is holy, it is "good." Its
"goodness" extends to all its purposes, all its objects, indeed to
all its effects. The Law is good for men, because amongst other
things, as the Apostle has been arguing, it shows us what sin is.
It not only does that, it shows us what we ought to be, how we
ought to live, how we ought to conduct and comport ourselves. All
that is very good for us. Indeed it is by the Law of God,
supremely, that a man can learn what is good for him, what is best
for him. There is no better life than a life lived in conformity
with God's Law. Anyone who lived such a life would be living the
best conceivable type of life. Our Lord lived such a life. We find
very often in the Psalms that the Psalmist praises the Law of God;
he says that he knows more than his teachers because of God's Law;
it is by means of God's Law that he has understanding and insight;
it is by knowing and learning about, and attempting to keep God's
Law that he has had the greatest happiness and the greatest joy in
his life. The 119th Psalm is, in a sense, devoted to that one
theme the goodness of the Law of God in and of itself. So the
Apostle is justified in saying that the Law, and each individual
commandment, is thoroughly good. Nothing can be better for us than
the keeping of the Law. So the Apostle must never be charged with
teaching that "the law is sin." His view of the Law is, he says,
that it is "holy, and just, and good," it is perfect. "The law of
the Lord is perfect, converting the soul," as Psalm 19 tells
us.

But still Paul has not quite finished with
the problem. There is a subsidiary problem. "Was then that which
is good made death unto me?" Notice how relentless man is in his
opposition to God, and His Law, and His ways. We often meet this
when handling people's difficulties. You appear to have answered
the question fully and satisfactorily; but then they say, "Yes,
but" there is still something troubling them. The fertility of the
human mind and imagination in creating difficulties is almost
endless; it is quite astonishing. But the Apostle is patient, and
is ready to take the difficulties one by one. "Was then that which
is good"--"You have just been saying that the law is holy, and
just, and good; do you mean to say, therefore, that that which is
good was made death unto me?" The question arises in this way. He
has been emphasizing that the law killed him. "When the
commandment came, sin revived, and I died." And again in verse 11,
"Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it
slew me." The law had killed him. The objector then sees a
difficulty--"Very well, I will agree that you have established
beyond any doubt at all that the Law is not sin. But you have just
said another thing which creates great difficulty in my mind. You
say now that the Law killed you; are you saying, then, that that
which is "holy, and just, and good" has killed you? How can that
which is good kill you?" That is the further question which the
Apostle takes up in the 13th verse.

In our general analysis of this section of
this chapter we stated that this 13th verse is somewhat difficult
to place. The question is, Does it belong to the section running
from verse 7 to verse I 2, or does it belong to the section that
follows? Is it the introduction to the following section? There is
a good deal to be said for both these views. It does not really
matter ultimately from the standpoint of truth, but if you have an
orderly mind you cannot help being interested in the problem. What
would perhaps incline me to say that it belongs to the next
section is the particular way in which Paul expresses himself. He
began a section at verse 7 by saying, "What shall we say then?"
That is his usual way of introducing a new section. Then he puts
his question, "Is the law sin?" And he answers, "God forbid." He
had adopted the same method at the beginning of chapter 6, "What
shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound? God forbid." And again he did it at verse 15 in chapter 6,
"Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?
God forbid." He seems to be doing the same here again, "Was then
that which is good made death unto me? God forbid!" In many ways
therefore he does seem to be introducing a new section.

At the same time it is clearly a
continuation of what Paul has just been saying. The difficulty is
occasioned by his saying that the Law is good but at the same time
saying that it was made death to him. The solution seems to be to
describe it as a transition verse which belongs partly to both
sections. When we come to the next section I shall show that the
whole of it, in a sense, is but an elaboration and an explanation
of the theme of this section which we are now finishing. So this
verse has a hook which connects it to the previous verse and also
a hook linking it to what follows.

The question is: Granted that the Law is
holy, and just, and good, nevertheless it does seem to have been
the cause of the spiritual death to which the Apostle is giving
such emphasis. Therefore the question follows, "Is the Law then
the cause of that death?" The answer is given immediately, "God
forbid!"--let it not even be mentioned, it is unthinkable. What
then is the explanation of what he has been saying? Paul explains
his answer in a most extraordinary statement which is also
difficult for one reason only, namely, that he left out the verb.
This Apostle does that kind of thing from time to time--he was not
a pedant, thank God. He often breaks the rules of grammar; and
here he has actually left out the verb, which must be supplied in
order to get at his meaning! What he is really, saying is this:
"It is not the Law that killed me, but sin. God forbid that anyone
should say that I am teaching that the Law was death unto me. It
was not; it was not the Law that killed me, it was sin that killed
me." So we can translate it thus, "Sin is the cause"; or "Sin
became death unto me"; or "Sin was allowed to produce, and to lead
to, this result of death to me." That is patently the meaning of
the statement, and it cannot carry any other meaning. The Apostle
is saying that God in His infinite wisdom allowed sin to do this
with the Law in order that certain results might follow. He has
already said twice that "Sin, taking occasion by"--making use of,
setting out from there as a military base of operations, acting as
a fulcrum--had done this. Now he says that God allowed sin to do
that with the Law.

Here we meet with a great problem, of
course. Why did the holy God allow sin to do this with His Law,
which is "holy, and just, and good?" The Apostle's answer is that
this was allowed in order that sin might appear sin, which means,
that sin might be "shown up for what it really is." The difficulty
with sin is to recognize it for what it is. Sin is deceitful, sin
is very clever, sin is like a fisherman who hides himself and
conceals the bait. Sin has to be shown up in order that it might
appear sin, that it might be "shown" to be sin. What Paul is
saying, therefore, is that it is the Law that really brings that
about. Sin was not quite as clever as it thought it was! That is
what the Bible says everywhere about the devil and sin. The devil
is very clever and very subtle, but not quite as clever as he
thinks he is. When the devil brought about, through men, the
crucifixion and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, he thought he
was producing his final masterpiece; but ultimately that is what
destroys him. The same is true of sin. Sin thought, cleverly, that
it was going to use the Law, and it did so in the senses we have
seen. But while it was doing so it was exposing itself.

That, he tells us, is the first reason why
this was ever allowed to take place. It is in this way that sin,
as sin, becomes clear and evident to us. Paul has already said
this in an experimental sense earlier in the words, "I had not
known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." Also
it was only when sin revived, when the Law came, that he was
killed and realized the truth about himself and the truth about
sin. That, then, is the first thing.

But there is here a second important
statement about sin: "That sin, by means of the commandment (or
through the commandment) might become exceeding sinful." It is
only by the Law that the exceedingly sinful character of sin is
demonstrated and brought out. In other words, the Apostle is
concerned to show not only the power of sin, but the malignity of
sin. This is the thing which we are so slow to learn; something of
which all of us, by nature, know little if anything. It explains
why, today, people object to this biblical doctrine of sin. They
hate it; indeed, some clever, popular preachers ridicule it in
terms of psychology. That is just the measure of their extreme,
utter blindness. Nothing is so true of sin as its exceeding
sinfulness, and nowhere do you see that exceeding sinfulness so
clearly as just here -- that it can even manipulate and use this
holy, just, good Law of God, and by means of it kill us! It can
twist and pervert and turn into an instrument that is opposed to
us even God's holy Law which is for our good. "Was then that which
is good made death unto me?" No, it was not the Law itself, but
sin which handled and abused it, sin which perverted it and used
it deceitfully, that brought about that result. And by this deed
we see sin's devilish character, its utter malignity, and its
foulness. Nothing too strong can be said about it. It is all
included in the expression "exceeding sinful." There is nothing
worse to be said about sin than that.

This is clearly an important statement for
us to grasp, not only because it shows us the exceeding sinful
character and nature of sin, but because at the same time it
instructs us with regard to the whole function and purpose of
God's Law and the giving of the Law. That is, after all, the
fundamental theme which the Apostle is handling.

Here I would interject a remark. The secret
of expounding "Romans seven" is to avoid becoming lost in the
details. There is no chapter in the Bible in which it is so easy
to "miss the wood because of the trees" as in this 7th chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans. It is essential, therefore, that we go
on reminding ourselves as to the chapter's fundamental purpose,
otherwise we shall become lost in the details. Its primary object,
its fundamental theme is to deal with the place and the function
of the Law in God's dealings with the human race. Every detail
must be considered in the light of that purpose, and of nothing
else. To start by thinking that the object of this chapter is that
Paul should give us his experience is to miss the whole point.
That is not his purpose at all. His fundamental object is to deal
with the charge that the Jews and others were bringing against him
by saying that his preaching meant that the Law of God was not
only useless but actually evil, that it had no function or purpose
at all, and that it would have been better if it had never been
given. It was the charge that his preaching of justification by
faith only, and by grace salvation by grace--was really throwing
the Law right out and dismissing it entirely.

Here, in this crucial verse, Paul shows the
real function and purpose of the Law. It is to show "the exceeding
sinfulness of sin." Of course, the Apostle has really said it
before, not in these exact terms, but he has made the same general
point in chapter 3, verse 20. Summing up the great argument about
justification he says there, "Therefore by the deeds of the law
there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is
the knowledge of sin." It is the law that gives us an
understanding of sin. It was never meant to justify a sinner. Here
he is repeating that truth, but also saying something
further.

There is a parallel statement in the
Epistle to the Galatians, in chapter 3, and verse 19 in
particular: "Wherefore then serveth the law?" Paul answers, "It
was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to
whom the promise was made." In other words, the Law was never
intended to be a way of salvation. The fundamental error of the
Jews was to think that it was so intended. That was exactly why
they had gone so sadly astray. The Apostle says the same thing
again in chapter 9 of this Epistle: "Israel, which followed after
the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of
righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but
as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that
stumbling-stone" (verses 31 and 32). That was their whole trouble.
They would persist in thinking that God had given His Law to them
in order that they might save themselves through it. But salvation
is a matter of grace entirely. God had stated that away back in
the Garden of Eden, and still more specifically, in the covenant
He made with Abraham. In Galatians, chapter 3, Paul says that what
governs salvation is the covenant of God made with Abraham and his
seed, and he reminds us that that was looking forward to Christ.
And he argues that the Law, which only came in four hundred and
thirty years after the covenant with Abraham, cannot disannul or
affect that fundamental original covenant. It was never meant to
do so. Why then was it brought in at all? Ah, says Paul, it was
brought in afterwards in order that people might see their need of
the Covenant of grace; it was brought in because of
"transgressions," till "the seed should come to whom the promise
was made." So later he says that it was a kind of "schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ." It does not save; it brings us to the Savior.
It is not the way of salvation; its purpose is to show us our need
of salvation, and to give us some indication of how it is going to
come.

Our understanding of this point is quite
crucial. The Apostle is telling us that we must get rid once and
for ever of the notion that the Law in any shape or form was meant
to save us. The Law cannot justify us, the Law cannot sanctify us.
And if you try to use it for either of these purposes you are
attempting something which is impossible. Here the particular
emphasis is upon the utter impossibility of ever being sanctified
by the Law. Sin being what it is, in all its power and malignity,
in all its subtlety and exceeding sinfulness,--render our
sanctification by the law an utter impossibility. The Apostle has
been working out this argument from verse 7 to the end of this
verse 13. But he is so anxious that we should be clear about the
matter that he does not even stop at verse 13. In verse 14 and to
the end of the chapter he proceeds still further to prove just
this one point--that a man can never become sanctified by the
deeds of the Law or by any attempt to work out for himself the
commandments and the dictates of the Law.

Here, then, we have arrived at a point of
transition, but before we begin to look at verse 14 we must give
thought to one other question. It has to be faced because the
Apostle, in a sense, makes us face it. It is this. Of whom has the
Apostle been speaking in the previous verses? I am not for the
moment going to discuss the identity of the person about whom Paul
is speaking from verse 14 to the end, but the identity of the
person of whom he has been speaking from verse 7 to verse 13.
"Nay," he says in verse 7, "I had not known sin, but by the law;
for I had not known lust, except the law had said..." "I was alive
without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived,
and I died." "The commandment, which was ordained to life, I found
to be unto death . . . and it slew me," and so on.

The question is, Of whom is the Apostle
speaking?

1. There have been those who have said that
the Apostle is not speaking of himself at all, but that he has
been personifying in his own person the state and the condition of
the Jews. They say that when he says "I was alive without the law
once" he is describing the condition of the Hebrews before the Law
was given by God through Moses to them. The commandment came when
God gave the Ten Commandments and the Moral law. We need not stay
with that, because there are very few, if any, today who still
hold to this theory. If the Apostle meant that, why did he not say
so? It would have been so much easier to say so. No, he is clearly
and patently talking about himself and his own experience, because
he puts it in terms of concupiscence. It is personal experience,
something that happens to an individual.

2. But then there arises the question, What
stage of his life, what stage in his human experience is the
Apostle describing? Here again there are some who say that the
Apostle is saying, "I was alive without the Law once. From my
birth until about the age of twelve, of course, I knew nothing
about these things at all; but then at the age of twelve, like
every other Jewish boy, I began to be instructed about the law;
and the moment I was given the teaching of the Law I began to
understand about sin, and I saw that I was a sinner." So they say
that Paul's first statement is about himself until he became an
adolescent; and that afterwards he is describing his experience as
an adolescent. But I would reject this again out of hand, and for
this good reason, that the piece of autobiography the Apostle
gives us in the 3rd chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians
excludes it completely. There he says in verse 6, "Concerning
zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is
in the law, blameless." That was not when he was an infant, not
when he was a boy, not until he became an adolescent, but right up
to the time when he became a Christian. He was a typical Pharisee,
and like all Pharisees he was very well pleased with himself. We
have already interpreted verse 9, "I was alive without the law
once," as meaning "I thought I was doing well, I was convinced I
was keeping the Law." That was because he had not understood about
coveting, and had reduced the Law to a number of actions and
particular sins. That was his condition as a Pharisee, and not
merely until he reached the age of twelve. So we reject that
interpretation.

3. Then there are those who would have us
believe that Paul is referring here to his experience after his
conversion. They say that no man can know what the Law really is
until he is regenerated and converted. Paul says, "The commandment
came, sin revived, I died." They teach that that came at
conversion or subsequent to it. But, again, I would reject that
for this reason, that the Apostle, surely, in this section is
describing the condition of a man who is "under the law." Here is
a man who is a victim of the Law, he is under the Law; everything
he says describes a man in that condition.

4. But I have a yet more powerful argument.
This section we have been looking at --verses 7 to 13 --is really
an elaboration of verse 5, which reads, "For when we were in the
flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our
members to bring forth fruit unto death." That is the primary
statement, and all we have been looking at is an elaboration of
it--"fruit unto death"--"slew me." Clearly he is describing a man
"under the law." Sin takes advantage of the Law in order to kill
him. He is describing a man who is "in the flesh"; and a man who
is "in the flesh" is not a Christian. The Christian he describes
in chapter 8, verse 9, thus: "But you are not in the flesh, but in
the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if
any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." So here
we have a man who is "in the flesh," and what he is dealing with
here is not something that has happened subsequent to
conversion.

5. We are left with this conclusion, that
the experience described must have been before the Apostle's
conversion. In that case the question arises, At what stage before
his conversion? He has told us that he is "in the flesh" still,
and all the effects he describes are those which happen to a man
"in the flesh"; but he also tells us that he now has a spiritual
understanding of the Law. The commandment has really "come" to him
with power; he sees its spiritual character; he has understood the
meaning of "Thou shalt not covet."

We have therefore to put these things
together. How can we do so? It seems to me that there is only one
adequate solution. Here is a man who is "under conviction of sin,"
but who has not yet understood the truth about salvation in Christ
Jesus. He is deeply convicted of sin, he has been "slain," he is
"dead," he realizes that he is not only guilty, but that he is
helpless, and that he has sin within him; but as yet he does not
understand anything further. The Apostle is describing something
that was once true of himself; he is looking back. "I had not
known sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the
law had said, Thou shalt not covet." "Sin taking occasion by the
commandment, wrought in me..." He is not saying that it is still
doing so; it did so then. It is all in the past. "I was alive
without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived,
and I died." He is not still dying. He is looking back. It is all
in the past. He is looking back across a past
experience.

When did this happen? The Apostle does not
tell us. Do you regret the absence of that fact? You should not do
so. If it had been important for us to know exactly when this
happened, he would have told us. As I keep on repeating, the
Apostle is not primarily concerned here about his own experience
or about himself; he is merely illustrating this tremendous point
of his about the purpose and function of the Law. He is showing us
the position of a man now awakened to the truth about the Law. And
there he leaves it; he does not tell us any more about it. When
was this? What I am going to say next is in a sense speculation; I
am only putting ideas before you tentatively. There are different
views, no one can establish any one of them. We cannot be certain
because the Apostle has not chosen to tell us.

1. Did this happen to Paul before his
experience on the road to Damascus? What exactly is the meaning of
the phrase in Acts 9, verse 5, where our Lord, speaking to Saul of
Tarsus on the road to Damascus, said, "It is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks," or "to struggle against the goad?" Of course,
the answer still is that we do not know. But it is not impossible
that this man, Saul of Tarsus, was already convicted of sin. "Ah
but," you may say, "if so, why did he go to Damascus "breathing
out threatenings and slaughter" against the Lord Jesus Christ and
all his followers?" Men convicted of sin have often done that in
their misery and unhappiness. His self-righteousness as a Pharisee
would make him hate this Teacher more than all others. It is not
incompatible at all with his being under conviction. This is an
interesting point from the experimental and practical standpoint.
Take it as a word of encouragement. If you are concerned about
some dear one whom you would like to see as a Christian, and for
whom you are praying, remember that sometimes, just before they
are converted, they become most violent against you and the Truth.
It is an indication very often that something is going on. The
violence is often a very good sign. Was it then the case that the
Apostle was convicted of sin before he went on the journey to
Damascus? I cannot exclude that possibility. But I am not saying
that I believe it was actually so.

Take another possibility. Is Paul
describing here what happened to him between the event on the road
to Damascus and the coming of Ananias to him with the comfort of
the gospel and the baptism of the Holy Ghost? Notice the very
interesting things we are told in the narrative in Acts 9. Let me
indicate those I regard as most important. In verse 6 we read,
"And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have
me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city,
and it shall be told thee what thou must do." In other words, our
Lord did not really give him the full comfort of salvation there,
if He gave it [to] him at all. Here is Saul of Tarsus
suddenly made to tremble and to be astonished. It was the sight of
the Lord who was speaking to him, and the realization that it was
Jesus that did this. At any rate, he came to realize there that he
had made a most terrible blunder about this Person, and he knew
now that He was the Son of God.

But then there is another statement of much
interest in verse 9: "And he was three days without sight, and
neither did eat nor drink." This is not an account of a man
rejoicing in his salvation--"trembling and astonished," "amazed,"
"blinded" physically, and he did not eat nor drink for three days.
Then we are told in verse 19, "And when he had received meat, he
was strengthened." He had become very weak. A three days" fast
does not make one as weak as the narrative indicates, but I can
understand a terrible conviction of sin doing so. Here was a man
who was an expert in the Law. Suddenly this light from heaven
comes down upon him, showing him that he had been utterly wrong;
so I suggest that in those three days he suddenly saw how
completely mistaken he had been about the Law. He saw its
spiritual character, he understood the meaning of coveting. All
hell was let loose within him, and he saw his complete death, his
wretched failure, his utter inability. But the coming of Ananias
was clearly and obviously a great help to him. "Brother Saul,"
said Ananias, "the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in
the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive
thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." And it was so. He
not only regained his sight, he now desires to eat; he is able to
eat, and is strengthened. For myself, I am content to believe that
that period is sufficient to account for all we have been looking
at in verses 7 to 13 of this 7th chapter of the
Epistle.

3. There is only one other possibility --
though I would exclude it--and that is, that something of this
went on during the three years that he was in Arabia. I cannot
accept that, because I cannot conceive that a man baptised with
the Holy Ghost could go through the experience which he describes
in the verses we have been considering. To me, therefore, it seems
probable that he is describing the period between the Damascus
road experience and the coming of Ananias; but I would not exclude
the possibility that something had been happening even
earlier.

But that is not the main issue here. It is
not the Apostle's fundamental concern. All he is saying is that
there was a time in his life when he felt that he was
"alive"--self-satisfied, self-righteous, self-confident--but that
when he began to understand the spiritual character and nature and
meaning of the Law, it killed him, "knocked the life out of him."
He became as a dead man, completely hopeless, utterly and
absolutely helpless. That is what he wants us to understand. When
it happened really does not matter; but that it had happened is of
extreme significance, as he will proceed to show us in the
remaining verses of the chapter.

ROMANS
7:14

"For we know that the law is
spiritual but I am carnal, sold under sin." --

In this verse we come to the beginning of
this most interesting section in this 7th chapter of this Epistle;
indeed we come to what is beyond any doubt the most famous and
best-known section in the entire Epistle. There is no section,
certainly, which has so frequently led to debate and disputation
and, unfortunately, one must add, even wrangling and a display of
a spirit far removed from that which is taught in the New
Testament. This is a subject, therefore, which we approach, I
trust, with a great deal of caution, and certainly with a maximum
of humility.

The dispute has always centred round the
question as to who this man is whom the Apostle is describing in
this section.

There have been three main views.

FIRST, there have been those who have said
that the Apostle is here describing an unregenerate man, a man who
is in the state of nature, not yet quickened and regenerated.

The SECOND view is that it is a description
of a regenerate man, and not only a description of a regenerate
man, but a description of a regenerate man always, even at his
best; indeed, that the Apostle Paul was describing himself and his
own experience at the very time he wrote these particular words.

The THIRD view maintains that it is an
account of the regenerate man in his early stages, at the
beginning of his Christian life, and before he has received a
"second blessing," or "second experience," which takes him out of
this state and puts him into the state of experience described in
the 8th chapter. In other words they say that this is only a
preliminary and temporary stage in the experience of the
regenerate man.

The history of these three differing views
is interesting, and it is well that we should know something about
them, because, whatever else it may do, I trust it will produce in
us the desired humility to which I referred. Anyone who approaches
this section without "fear and trembling," and without humility,
is not really fit to expound Scripture at all.

1. It is generally agreed that most of the
Fathers of the Church, during the first three centuries, regarded
these verses as being a description of the unregenerate man. That
is just a fact of history. There were some exceptions, but
speaking of them as a whole it is true to say that for the first
three centuries the great doctors of the Church, the "Patristic
Fathers" so-called, and others took this view, that this was an
account of the unregenerate man. Then we come to the great figure
whom we describe as Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest
luminaries in the whole story of the Christian Church, who was
active during the period 386-430 A.D. His story with regard to
this section is particularly interesting. He began by regarding
it, as those who had gone before him had done in general, as a
description of the unregenerate man.

2. Augustine did so, and from teaching that
Paul is describing here the unregenerate man, he then championed
the exposition that it was clearly the regenerate man, and the
regenerate man even at his best. So Augustine moved from the first
position to the second.

The Protestant Reformers and the Puritans,
and all who have followed them, have almost without exception
followed that second exposition of Augustine; in other words, they
have taught that this is a description of the regenerate man. They
take the view that this is a description of the regenerate man:
and the Reformed tradition of exposition has generally followed
that course.

On the other hand, those who have followed
the different theological system commonly called the Arminian,
have generally taught that this is a description of the
unregenerate man--the view that was taken by the Patristic
Fathers.

3. But then, during the last hundred years,
there have been others who, while belonging to the general
evangelical tradition in the main tenor and exposition of
Scripture, have taken the third view, that it is not a description
of the full-fledged regenerate man, the regenerate man at his best
as long as he lives in this world, but the ill-taught and
incomplete regenerate man who has not yet advanced to the position
described in the 8th chapter of this Epistle.

This very brief summary of the history of
the interpretation reminds us that we must approach this matter
with care, and above all, with great humility. Nothing is quite so
bad and reprehensible as a party spirit. Whatever party we belong
to, or whatever views we may hold, a party spirit is always wrong.
Our great concern should be the Truth. Of necessity, we all hold a
particular point of view and adhere to some system of doctrine. We
cannot avoid doing so. People who say that they do not hold to any
particular system, and that they are "just biblical," are simply
confessing that they have never really understood the teaching of
the Bible. But though we may find ourselves, in general, following
a certain line of exposition, a particular school of thought and
of teaching, a particular view of dogmatic theology, we must never
allow that to turn into a party spirit. Though this is true of us,
we must come to every particular statement of the Scripture with
an open mind; we must try to discover what the Scripture is
saying, because no system is perfect, and at particular points
even the best system may have certain defects. No system worked
out by man ever has been, or ever will be perfect. Therefore,
though we are governed in general by certain views, that does not
mean that we must slavishly follow in every detail what has
generally been taught by that particular school of thought. We
must always be honest, we must seek earnestly for "the unction of
the Holy Spirit," we must realize that no teachers in the Church
have had a complete monopoly of Truth. We must realize that at
certain points the best systems can be somewhat defective because
they are human products. So we approach this section of Scripture
with great humility, with great carefulness and concern, and yet
without a prejudiced mind.

As we approach this problem we are
confronted by two possible procedures.

1. One is for me to outline immediately the
view I hold of this section, and then, as we come to the
particular statements, to proceed to prove that this is the
correct view.

2. But I have rejected that way of approach
because I believe there is another method which is not only better
in itself, but also more Scriptural. It is the method we have
hitherto adopted and is as follows.

First, let us look at the particular
statements as if we held no view with respect to the whole
section; let us try to discover what each statement says, and
then, having arrived at what seems to be the meaning of each
particular part, let us gather all together and try to arrive at a
conclusion.

That is undoubtedly the better method, the
method to be followed in any realm and department of thought. It
is always right to listen to the evidence before you give a
verdict. He is a very poor judge who starts with his verdict, and
then proceeds to turn down everything that opposes it, instead of
listening first to all the arguments, and giving them their full
value. And any ordinary fair-minded man would follow the same
procedure. As Christians, we should know the terrible danger of
prejudice, and how it has so often led to rancour, wrangling, a
bitter party spirit, and even cruelty and war, in the long history
of the Church. it behoves us, therefore, more than anyone to adopt
this second method. So we shall proceed to take this passage in
the way in which we have approached so many other passages of
Scripture.

We shall adopt the inductive method and
work up to a conclusion.

We start then with a general analysis of
the section, following the exact order of the verses:

In verse 14 the Apostle makes a general
statement about the position and the condition of the man
described--whoever or whatever he may be. "We know that the law is
spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin."

Verse 15 describes that position and
condition as shown in practice and in daily life. "For that which
I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I
hate, that do I." These words tell us how the man described in
verse 14 behaves.

Verses 16 and 17 contain two inferences or
deductions that can be drawn about this man and his conduct.

The first, "If then I do that which I would
not, I consent unto the law that it is good." That is a fair
deduction.

But there is a second deduction.

"Now then it is no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me."

Verses 18-20 read: "For I know that in me
(that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing: for to will is
present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would
not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that
do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." Here we have a fuller
exposition and explanation of what has been said in verse 17 about
this man. That is typical of the Apostle's method, as we have
often seen.

Verse 21: Here we have another general
statement, but at a somewhat deeper level. In effect Paul is
almost taking up again the statement of verse 14; but in the light
of what he has just been saying, he adds to it. "I find then a
law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me." It is,
I repeat, another general statement about this man.

Verses 22 and 23 expound what has just been
said in verse 21. "For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against
the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of
sin which is in my members."

Verse 24: Here is the cry of despair, and
at the same time, the cry for deliverance that results from the
realization that he is in the terrible position which he has been
describing.

Verse 23: This begins with an ejaculation
of relief. I deliberately describe it in this way for reasons that
will emerge later. The verse closes with a brief summing up of the
statement he has been making about this man in the entire
section.

Let us now take a somewhat closer view of
the argument. What is the main thrust of the section? What is the
Apostle really concerned to do here? We start with the word "For,"
with which verse 14 opens.

Never has this word been more important
than at this point; because it tells us that Paul is not
introducing an entirely new section here, not starting upon a new
subject; he is continuing with the previous one. This section is
an elaboration and a further and a deeper exposition of what he
has already been saying. The next term settles that once and for
ever. "For," he says, "we know." What do we know? "That the law is
spiritual." In other words, from verse 14 and onwards the Apostle
is still dealing with the Law and its functions, as has been the
case from the 1st verse of this chapter. That is still the theme;
he has not finished with the Law, he has not finished with his
exposition with regard to the Law and its function.

I am suggesting, therefore, that from this
14th verse to the end of the chapter Paul is still dealing with
the same major theme that has occupied him from the beginning of
the chapter. He is answering the charge brought against him with
respect to his teaching concerning the Law.

And we have seen that there were two main
charges brought against his teaching, and two subsidiary charges.

The general charge was that he was
dismissing the law altogether, and saying that the law was of no
value at all. That charge he answers in the first six verses.

But in doing so he seems to be saying two
things about the Law to which certain people objected.

The first is conveyed in verse 7. "What
shall we say then? Is the law sin?" That arises because in verse 5
he seemed to say that the law was sin--"For when we were in the
flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law (energized by
the law), did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto
death." And we have seen that from verse 7 to verse 12 Paul has
been dealing with that charge and proving that the Law is not sin;
it is sin itself that has so abused and twisted and misused the
Law that it has produced, and led to, sin.

But a second objector asks in verse 13,
"Was then that which is good made death unto me?" And Paul answers
immediately, "God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin,
working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful." But he was not
satisfied with that. This is always his method. In verse 7, having
raised the question, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin?" he
replies, "God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law."
Then he proceeds to expound that in the following verses. He does
precisely the same here. He asks the question, "Was then that
which is good made death unto me?" and answers immediately in the
remainder of verse 13. But he does not stop at that; he goes on to
expound it: and that is what we have in verses 14 to the end of
the chapter.

Or we can put it positively and say that
Paul is concerned here to show his actual view of the Law, to show
what the Law is in and of itself, what it was meant to do, and
especially what it was not meant to do. The Law is God's Law; it
is "holy, and just, and good"; it was meant to do certain things,
but equally clearly it was not meant to do certain other things,
and it cannot do them.

That is why we have to become "dead to the
law" before those things can happen. I suggest that he is still
concerned with that theme; and that his fundamental object in
particular is to show what the Law could not do. In other words,
the Apostle in this section is not primarily concerned to "give
his experience"; he has not set out just to tell us something
about himself. He is telling us and setting out before us his view
of the Law--the nature of the Law, what it is meant to do, and
what it is not meant to do, or the limits to the Law. In other
words in this section he is, in particular, refuting the charge
that he had taught in verse 5 that the Law is death or produces
death. But at the same time he is showing how the Law, because of
sin, becomes a minister of death. He had already shown this with
respect to the charge that the Law is sin. He says that the Law is
not sin, but because of the character of sin in man the Law
aggravates sin, "produces it," and so brings out the "exceeding
sinfulness of sin."

That is my suggestion as to the meaning and
purpose of this section. May I offer a little proof of this at
this point, before we proceed any further. Look at what the
Apostle says in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. Verse 2: "For
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and death." Here we find the same two thoughts
again. The Law, because of sin in man, has become "a law of sin,"
a law that aggravates sin. It has also become a Law that produces
"death," or leads to death--again because of sin. So he now calls
it "the law of sin and death." That is the same Law of which he
has been speaking since the beginning of chapter 7. He has proved
that in terms of the relationship between husband and wife. Having
said all he has said about it in chapter 7, in chapter 8, verse 2,
he sums it up as "the law of sin and death." Then to make his
point doubly sure he says in verses 3 and 4, "For what the law
could not do" that is what he is concerned about--"what the law
could not do because it was weak through the flesh, God sending
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,
condemned sin in the flesh: (in order) that the righteousness of
the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit." In other words I suggest that in chapter 8,
verses 2, 3 and 4, he is summing up all that he has been saying in
chapter 7. He seems to say, "Well now, there I have proved it to
you; that is what I have been saying all along; that now "the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" hath set us free altogether
from the Law which had become to us a law of "sin and death.""
Above all, I repeat, his original intention is to prove that the
Law was never given either to justify or to sanctify us, that
indeed it has become an actual hindrance in both respects, and we
have to be set free and delivered from it before we can be either
justified or sanctified.

I suggest, then, that that is the theme of
this section. It is about the Law, what it does do, what it does
not do, what it cannot do. The Apostle is not primarily writing
about himself or his experience, but about the Law and the truth
about the Law.

There is one other general point which I
must take up--the point that is so constantly made--that here the
Apostle changes the tense in which he speaks.

Hitherto he has been talking about the
past. He has said "I was alive without the law once, but when the
commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment,
which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin,
taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew
me." He is talking about the past and we have agreed that he was
talking about the past. But now, says someone, here he suddenly
changes his tense and he says, "We know that the law is spiritual:
but I am carnal"--not "I was carnal"--"sold under sin." And he
goes on in the present tense, "For that which I do"--not that
which I did--"that which I do I allow not: for that which I would,
that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." It is all, they
say--and rightly--in the present tense. What do we say to
this?

There are those who say that this settles
the whole matter, and that when he says "I am" he means "I am,"
when he says "I do" he means "I do," and that clearly enough, he
is describing his personal experience at the very time of writing.

But that does not follow for a moment, and
of itself does not prove anything whatsoever. If there were such a
proof there would never have been the great discussion I have
described, and a man like Augustine would never have changed from
one position to the other. That the matter of tense does not
settle the question, and that the matter cannot be disposed of so
simply, can be stated in the following way.

A form that is very often adopted in
pleading a case, or in establishing a point, is to employ the
method of speech known as the "dramatic present." This is done
very often by preachers. I often use this method myself. I say to
a man who puts a certain proposition to me, "Well now," if that is
so, the position you leave me in is this." I am putting it in the
present--I do this, I say that. I am dramatizing the argument,
saying, "Well now, this is the position in which you leave me";
and then I proceed to put it in terms of that position; "This is
how I find myself if what you are saying is right." It is a very
common way of establishing a point. So we are entitled to say that
the Apostle here is putting this whole position in this personal
and dramatic way in order to make it objective. He puts it in
terms of a person and how that person finds himself, and what he
finds in himself, in the light of this particular
position.

In other words, all I am saying at the
moment is that we must not be carried away by the notion that the
mere change in the tense establishes the only possible
interpretation of this particular section. And let me add that the
great men who have taken the different points of view are on the
whole ready to grant that what I have just been saying is a simple
and well-known fact, namely, that this personalizing, this
dramatic representation, is a form of expression frequently used
in the Scriptures.

We can now begin to look at the statement
of verse 14: "We know that the law is spiritual." There is no need
to go over that again. He has already said that the Law is "holy,
and just, and good"; and has repeated that it is "good." This is
something that can now be taken for granted. "We know that the law
is spiritual"; at least those to whom (to use Paul's own phrase)
the Law "has come" know that. The moment it has "come" in that way
a man knows that the Law is "spiritual." There is no need to
debate the point. Once more he is not really saying anything new;
he is just reminding us of what he has already said. It is a Law
that has come from God, and hence it is holy, just, and good. God
is Spirit, and therefore His Law is spiritual.

But there is also a second meaning, namely,
that the Law is not merely a matter of "the letter." There is a
clear exposition of this distinction in 2 Corinthians 3:6, where
we find interesting contrast between the Law and the spirit. Paul
says in verses 5 and 6, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves
to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of
the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the
spirit giveth life." The Law is spiritual in that sense. The
mistake the Jews had made was to regard the letter only; they took
a carnal view of the Law. That was the "veil" that was still over
their faces, as the Apostle says later in the same chapter. But
the Christian view is that the Law is spiritual--not the letter
but the spirit; spirit in contrast to letter. The non-spiritual
view of the Law regards it as concerned only with external
actions. But the spiritual view of the Law, knows that it is as
much concerned about motives as it is about actions. "Thou shalt
not covet." The moment a man realizes that the Law so speaks, he
has a spiritual view of the Law, and he realizes that the Law is
spiritual. Again, the Law is spiritual in its intent, its concern
is to lead to life. Paul has already stated that clearly in verse
to: "The commandment which was ordained to life." If only men had
kept it, it would have led to life--"Do this, and thou shalt
live." That is a spiritual matter. The Law, if carried out, leads
to the life of God. We are reminded again of that here.

But, alas, we know something else also--"I
am carnal, sold under sin." We have here what is, in many ways,
the key statement of the whole of this section; and, as is his
custom, the Apostle puts it right at the beginning, so that we may
be able to understand throughout what he is saying. Here is the
first fundamental and general statement. "Carnal!" The word itself
actually means "fleshy," "pertaining to the flesh," "fleshly." We
have already met with it several times. It is a description of man
as he is by nature in contrast with the life of the spirit. The
contrast is always "flesh" and "spirit." It means man's life as
organized and lived apart from God and the power of the Holy
Spirit in his life. It is really present in verse 5: "For when we
were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did
work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." You have it
again in verse 6: "But now we are delivered from the law, that
being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness
of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." We interpreted
that as saying that "the oldness of the letter" is characteristic
of being "under the law," which is the same as being "in the
flesh." A man who is "in the flesh" is "under the law." So when he
says here, "I am carnal," he does not mean that the flesh which
remained in him was carnal, he does not say that there was
something that was still within him which was carnal; he says that
he himself is carnal--"I am carnal."

In Scripture the term "carnal" is used in
two main ways.

The FIRST is the one I have already been
expounding, and which you find again, for instance, in the next
chapter in verses 5-9. "They that are after the flesh do mind the
things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit"--mark the
contrast--"the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is
death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the
carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the
flesh"--these carnal and carnally minded people--"cannot please
God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that
the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his." Such is the common use of the
term.

But there is a SECOND use of the term
"carnal." We find it in the First Epistle to the Corinthians at
the beginning of chapter 3. Notice how the Apostle puts it: "And
I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as
unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with
milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it,
neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas
there is among you envying and strife, and divisions, are ye not
carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and
another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?" There Paul describes
the "carnal" person as one who is "a babe in Christ," an immature
Christian, a Christian who lacks fuller understanding. He says, "I
could not give you the fuller truth that I would have liked to
have given you, because you are still carnal." Obviously he means
that though they were born again and had become Christians, they
are still "babes in Christ," and so much of their thinking is
still that old type of thinking. In other words he says that they
were behaving as if they were still "carnal." What else can be
possibly mean? They are born again, and they are therefore "in the
Spirit"; and yet he says that they are "carnal." The Apostle can
only mean that they are carnal in the sense that they go on
thinking in the old way in which they used to think before they
became spiritual.

Those are the only two uses of this word
carnal that we find in the Scripture. What light does the first
use throw on this statement, "We know that the law is spiritual,
but I am carnal?" Are we not already in a position to draw out an
inference? This statement cannot possibly be about the mature
Apostle Paul. He cannot say of himself as the Apostle who wrote
this Epistle to the Romans "I am carnal," if by "carnal" you mean
what he says it means in the next chapter, verses 5-9. But it
cannot possibly carry the second use either, because that would
mean that the Apostle is a mere "babe in Christ," for in writing
to the Corinthians he not only tells them that they are babes, and
that he cannot give them the spiritual teaching which a spiritual
man could give them, he also tells them in chapter 2 of that
Epistle that there are other Christians of whom it can be said
that they are "spiritual," that they have the "mind of Christ,"
and that "he that is spiritual judgeth all things," etc. There is
the type of Christian who can follow his exalted teaching; the
Corinthians cannot do so because they are "carnal," mere "babes."
It is patently clear, therefore, that the Apostle cannot possibly
be saying of himself, "I am carnal," in that sense.

"But I"--who is this? He is someone who is
"carnal." Look through your Bibles as to the meaning of the word
carnal; try to find something over and above what I have put
before you, and then face this question. Is this a description of
the Apostle Paul when he wrote this Epistle? Is it a description
of a Christian man who has matured as much as it is possible for a
Christian to mature and to develop while he is alive in this
world? For the moment do not go further than that. This is a
preliminary and a key statement. We must not rush past it. "I am
carnal." It is not the only thing that is true about this "I";
there is something further which we shall go on to consider--"sold
under sin." We have surely realized already that there is no glib
or easy answer to the problem posed by this section. We must
proceed cautiously and reverently, giving every word and statement
its full value, and above all, free from a desire to assert our
particular point of view. May we all seek that "unction" and
"anointing" from "the holy One; for the matter with which we are
dealing is beyond the realm of grammar and intellectual
dexterity.

ROMANS
7:14,15.

"For we know that the law is
spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.

"For that which I do I allow not: for
what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I."
--

As we proceed with this difficult,
much-discussed and controversial section of this 7th chapter of
this Epistle we must gird up the loins of our minds, and make a
real effort to understand. We must not give up because the subject
matter is difficult. You will then find happening to you what is
the almost universal experience of all Law students. When students
first begin to listen to lectures on a subject they often feel on
the first few occasions not only that they know nothing at all of
what is being said, but that probably they will never be able to
understand. There is only one thing to do at that point, and that
is to go on listening. If you go on listening you will begin to
find that more than you had ever realized is sinking and seeping
in, and you will wake up one day and say, "Ah, I now see what it
is about, I am beginning to understand." Do not be impatient with
yourself when you are studying a difficult passage in Scripture;
keep on, hold on, reading or listening; and suddenly you will find
that not only do you know much more than you thought you knew, but
you will be able to follow and to understand. It is necessary that
one should say things like that from time to time, because the
devil is ever at hand to say to us, "This or that is of no use to
you, you cannot follow it, leave it to the theologians." Do not
listen to him, but say "I belong to the Christian family and I
intend to listen and to read until I do understand it." Do that,
and you will not only defeat the enemy, but you will soon find
that you have an understanding.

As we have already seen, the Apostle starts
with a general proposition: "We know that the law is spiritual."
Well, then, if the Law is spiritual, where does the trouble lie?
What is wrong? Why are things as they are? And he answers the
question in the second half of the 14th verse. The trouble is that
"I am carnal." But I am not only carnal, I am also sold under
sin." Here is the new phrase, here is a most remarkable statement.
As far as I can make out, all the commentators are agreed that
this is the most significant statement in the whole section,
whatever view they may happen to take of it. This is the key
phrase in many senses, and especially when taken with the previous
one, "I am carnal." The two go together. "I am carnal"--indeed,
"sold under sin." The commentators who belong to the Reformed
tradition and who generally take the view that this is a
description of the regenerate man, indeed of Paul himself when
writing, are honest enough, most of them, to admit that this
statement is their major difficulty, the one they find most
difficult to explain. Of course they then proceed to try to
explain it. Whatever view you may take of this section, you will
find yourself hard put to it at some point or another.

That is a great comfort to all of us.
Whatever your view of this section there will be particular
statements which will trouble you, and there comes the danger, the
tendency just to twist things a little, or modify them, in order
to make them fit in. We must try to avoid that. But all are in
trouble.

Those who take the view that this is a
description of the regenerate man at his best, even as he will be
until he dies, are in particular trouble with this phrase, "sold
under sin." All are agreed that it is a very strong term. It means
"sold" or "disposed of" "into slavery." There is no doubt about
the meaning. "Sold under sin" means that I am "sold into a
condition of slavery to sin," that I am "a slave" to sin. Sin is
the master and I am the slave. That is the plain meaning of the
actual words used by the Apostle. He does not say that we have
sold ourselves into this slavery; what he says is that we are in
this condition of slavery. He is not concerned here to argue as to
how we have arrived there. But here he just makes the statement
that we are slaves of sin, sold as slaves in the market unto, into
the position of, and under, the governance of sin.

Another remark we must make about this
statement is that it applies to the man, and not merely a part of
the man, whoever he is, whom the Apostle is describing. He is not
saying "The law is spiritual, but a part of me is carnal, a part
of me is a slave to sin." What he says is, "I am carnal, I am sold
under sin." There is nothing here to suggest that he is only
referring to the sinful part of himself. It is a statement made
about the man as a whole. That is a most important point for us to
grasp. What, then, is the meaning of this statement? Surely this
is a reference back to some statements he has already made in
chapter 6. Take verse 16 for instance: "Know ye not," he says,
"that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants
ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience
unto righteousness." "Servants" means "slaves," being sold as
slaves. Then in the 17th verse we read: "God be thanked, that ye
were the slaves of sin," and so on. Verse 18 mentions it again,
putting it positively, "Being then made free from sin, ye became
the slaves of righteousness." When you were taken out of that
slavery to sin you became the slaves of righteousness. Note also
the 20th verse: "For," he says, "when ye were the slaves of sin,
ye were free from righteousness." I suggest that he is still using
the same picture here, the same analogy, the same terms. "I am
carnal, the slave of sin."

So we proceed to ask a question. We must
ask these questions as we go on in order that we may build up our
evidence so as to try to arrive at a conclusion. Of whom is such a
statement true?

That leads to the next question. Is this,
then, a description of the regenerate man? Here again I have no
hesitation in asserting equally strongly that it is not, and that
it cannot be so. Why not the regenerate? Because that would be to
fly in the face of everything that the Apostle has been telling us
from chapter 5, verse 20. Indeed, we could even go back to the
beginning of chapter 5; but it becomes especially cogent in verse
20. "Moreover," he says, "the law entered." Now that is what we
are dealing with in this 7th chapter--the place and function of
the Law. "When the law came, sin revived, and I died." "The law
entered." Why has the Law entered? "That the offence might
abound." Does that mean that our situation is hopeless, worse than
ever? No, says Paul, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more
abound." That is his great theme and contention. Then he goes on,
"That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign
through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
That was once our position; sin "reigned" over us. From verse 12
until verse 19 Paul has been describing what was true of us all.
But the Apostle's whole contention is, that we are no longer in
Adam, we are in Christ; we are no longer "under the law," we are
under grace. We compared these two reigns most carefully--the
reign of sin and the reign of grace bringing out the "much more"
idea that he has used several times in that famous section of
chapter 5, "Much more," "More abundantly." "For as by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one
many shall be made righteous." "Not as it was by one that sinned,
so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but
the free gift is of many offences unto justification." Those are
his phrases, and he used this word "abundance" in verse 17--"which
receive abundance of grace." It is this superabounding" element
that the Apostle is concerned about in that entire chapter. I say,
therefore, that you cannot apply these words, "I am carnal, sold
under sin," to a man who is no longer "under sin" but he is now
"under grace." The "much more" of the gospel has come in where the
regenerate man is concerned. He is under "the reign of grace"; so
this statement cannot be true of the regenerate man.

Indeed we have an explicit statement again
in the 2nd verse of chapter 6 where the Apostle takes up this
point. Someone says, "Very well, in the light of your teaching,
what you are really saying is that we can sin as much as we like
because grace will much more abound." "God forbid," says Paul,
"How shall we that died to sin"--we have done so, we have died to
sin; it is the aorist tense--"How shall we that died to sin, live
any longer therein?" You recall his exposition of that truth, and
how he proceeds to establish it, to work it out in detail, in
terms of our "union" with the Lord Jesus Christ. How, then, can
you possibly say of such a man that he is "carnal," that he is
"sold under sin?" He was in that condition once, but he is no
longer there.

Then, on the basis of that, Paul goes on to
make his exhortation in verse 12: "Let not sin therefore...." He
says that we must not let sin reign, and need not let sin reign,
even in our mortal bodies. But if the regenerate man is carnal,
and "sold under sin," how can that be reconciled with the
exhortation to the regenerate, "Let not sin reign in your mortal
body?" Then there is the statement of verse 14 in that chapter,
"Sin shall not have dominion over you." Why? "Because you are no
longer under law, but under grace." Sin does not have "dominion"
over the man who is "under grace" and no longer "under law."
Indeed the whole chapter seems to go on repeating the same thing.
Verse 17 runs, "God be thanked, ye were the servants of sin"; but
you are so no longer, because "you have obeyed from the heart that
form of doctrine that was delivered you." Then in verse 18: "Being
then made free from sin, ye became the slaves of righteousness." I
repeat these statements because the Apostle has repeated them, and
in so doing he has prepared the way for what he is saying here in
chapter 7. Yet so many seem to expound chapter 7 as if they had
never read chapter 6. Take again verse 20: "For when ye were
slaves of sin, ye were free from righteousness." Can you still say
that about a man who is regenerate? Can you say that he is still
the slave of sin, "sold under sin?" And then finally, verse 22:
"But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye
have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life."
Those statements surely cannot be reconciled with the notion that
"I am carnal, sold under sin" is a description of a regenerate man
at any stage of development. That seems to me to be a denial of
everything the Apostle has been setting out to establish in
chapters 5 and 6.

But, indeed, Paul has already said the same
thing even in this chapter 7 itself. Look at that magnificent
statement in the 4th verse: "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are
become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be
married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead." Why?
"That you should bring forth fruit unto God." We could not bring
forth fruit unto God while we were married to the Law. Thank God
we are no longer married to the Law, we are married to Christ in
order that we might bear offspring, "bring forth fruit" to Him. We
are no longer "under sin" but "under grace," and that is why as
Christians we can and should bring forth fruit. Again we find the
same thing in verse 6. He puts it negatively in verse 5, saying,
"When we were in the flesh"--far from bringing forth fruit unto
God "the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our
members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered
from the law, that being dead wherein we were held," or "being
dead to that wherein we were held"--"that (in order that) we
should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the
letter." The attempt at service in the "oldness of the letter"
brings forth nothing but fruit unto death. We are now in "newness
of spirit" in our service, and we are going to "bring forth fruit
unto God." I cannot reconcile the idea that verse 14 is a
description of a regenerate man, with verses 4 and 6 in this same
7th chapter. Then, when I go to chapter 8, I am in still greater
difficulty. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that
are in Christ Jesus," says verse 1. Verses 2-4 state, "For the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the
law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it
was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh;
(in order) that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit."

We shall find, later, that those who hold
that this is a description of a regenerate man have to add a
footnote in which they say, "Of course, that is not the whole
truth about the regenerate man; what is said in chapter 8 is also
true of the regenerate man." To which my reply is that these two
things cannot be true at one and the same time; I am either "sold
under sin" or I am not. Each one of us is in one of two positions.
I am either "sold under sin" or I am "sold under Christ." I am
either a slave to sin or I am a slave of grace and of God and of
righteousness, as the Apostle has put it so many times in chapter
6. In any case he is talking about a whole man and not merely
about a part of a man. The word is "I"--not "a part of me." He
does not say this is the partial truth about me; but "I am carnal,
sold under sin."

But let us go on to verse 15, because it
will help us to see this point still more clearly. In verse 15, as
I indicated in the general analysis, the Apostle goes on to
describe the kind of life lived by the person whom he has
described in verse 14. "For"--note the continuation--"For that
which I do I allow not." I, who am carnal and sold under sin--this
is true of me, "I do what I allow not." Indeed, further: "What I
would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I." Note well the
description of this man, and observe, once more, that the Apostle
is not describing merely one part of this man; he is describing
the whole man. He is not only describing the sinful part of this
man, because he cannot say of the sinful part of this man that it
desires to keep the Law, but he says, "That which I do, I allow
not; for what I would, that do I not, but what I hate that do I."
He is talking about the whole person, and as I say, this
connecting word "For" surely proves and establishes that
fact.

It is interesting to notice how those who
take the view that the regenerate man is under consideration try
to water down this statement. They must, of course, do so. So what
they say is this, "The Apostle, of course, was a most vehement
kind of man, a man with powerful emotions, and now and again he
gets carried away and uses hyperbole, he exaggerates, and he has
been exaggerating here." They say "He is not as bad as he says he
is; he puts it as a bald statement, but he does not really mean
that that is true of the man." Let me quote one of them who puts
it thus: "What is being expressed here is the Apostle's deep
regret that his heart and life were not entirely spiritual, not
perfectly in accordance with divine Law. What Paul is saying is
that he felt "as if" he were the slave of a tyrant; not that he
is, but "as if" he were the slave of a tyrant who employed him in
work which he abhorred. His prevailing desire--note the word
"prevailing"--"was perfect conformity to a holy, just, and good
law; yet he felt that much was wanting, much was wrong." To me,
that is a travesty of what the Apostle himself actually says here.
He is not saying that his "prevailing" mood is all right, but that
"much was wanting, much was wrong." Look again to the words of the
Apostle: "I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I
allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that
do I."

What, then, is Paul saying here? What is
the meaning of this word "allow"--"That which I do I allow not?"
The real meaning of the word is "to know," as if he were saying
"that which I do, I really do not know why I am doing it." In
other words he means, "I do not understand why I am doing it."
Indeed it means, "I do not approve of what I am doing; that is not
my understanding of these matters, so that when I do these things
I do not understand myself, as it were. I am doing something which
is the opposite of the view I hold." That is the meaning of the
word "allow" "I don"t know," "I don"t understand," "I don"t
approve."

The other word we must look at is the word
"hate," because again it is a very strong word. Paul is saying
that he not merely disapproves of what he does, but he hates it,
he abominates it. These are very significant
statements.

Let us look closely at this 15th verse. It
is a tremendous statement, a profound bit of analysis, a striking
example of "biblical psychology." We must be clear that the
Apostle is not saying that he is "always doing evil" and that he
"never does any good at all." That would be to ridicule the whole
position. The Apostle is not saying so, but some have interpreted
it in that way, as if the Apostle is saying, "Everything I do is
wrong, and I never do that which is right." Obviously he is not
saying that.

SECONDLY, while I assert that Paul is not
saying that he always does wrong and never does right, at the same
time we have no right to insinuate the word "sometimes" or
"occasionally." You will find that many commentators have recourse
to these words. It is their only way out of the difficulty that
arises for them because they think that a regenerate man is in
view. So they express the case thus: "That which I occasionally
do, I allow not, for what I would, I occasionally do not, but what
I hate, that I occasionally do." I argue that it is as wrong to
insinuate, to insert, the words "occasionally" or "sometimes," as
it is to say that he "always" did wrong and never did
right.

My THIRD comment has reference to the word
"do." "That which I do." Have we any right to say that what Paul
means by "do" has no reference to actions but only to thought and
imagination. You will find that some of the commentators who say
that this was a regenerate man speak in that way. They say, "You
must not understand this as saying that Paul is actually doing
these various things. No, no! Paul was such a spiritual man that
if he thought of an action he said, "I have done it," or if he
imagined it, he had "done it."" Of course, there is a sense in
which that is true, as we have seen in expounding the previous
section, but my question is: Have we the right to confine this
word "do" to thought and imagination only, and to exclude
actions?

FOURTHLY, is it not obvious that this is a
description, not so much of what is only occasionally or
invariably true about this man, but of the man's life on balance,
as a whole, looked at generally. Surely any unbiased reading must
lead to that conclusion. "We know that the law is spiritual; but I
am carnal, sold under sin. What I do, I allow not, for what I
would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I"--not invariably,
not occasionally; but looking at my life as a whole, looking at it
on balance, this is what is true.

And if this be so, surely, then, we can
take the next step. If this is what is true of my life, looked at
as a whole and taken on balance, then it is a description of a
life of frustration, defeat and failure. Am I going too far? If
you think so, my answer is to refer you to verse 24, "O wretched
man that I am!" and so on, which is clearly a description of
frustration, defeat, and failure.

So I ask once more, Who is being described
here in the 15th verse? It is the same question as I asked in the
14th verse.

What then of the regenerate? I answer
carefully and guardedly. What is said here about this man's
experience is true in a measure of the experience of the
regenerate. I will go further. It is true of the experience of all
regenerate persons in a measure. He still has a fight to wage,
that is why he is exhorted, as Paul exhorts him in verses 11, 12
and 13 of chapter 6. But while I say that this is true in a
measure, and only in a measure, of the regenerate, it is certainly
not a description of the regenerate man as he is in general. It is
not a description of the man to whom those exhortations are made,
and to any of whom those glowing, wonderful statements have been
made in chapters 5 and 6. The regenerate man, when he falls into
sin, has to say that he has done something which he does not
believe in doing; he is aware that he is not already perfect; but
he does not speak of himself as a man who lives a frustrated,
defeated life of failure. If so, he is not paying heed to the
exhortation of the Apostle who says "Let not sin reign in your
mortal body." And it cannot be a description of the Paul who could
write, "Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which
walk so as ye have us for an ensample" (Philippians 3:13-21.) So I
reject the idea that this statement is about the regenerate man
even at his best.

Therefore I end with this statement: Verse
15, we can safely say, is true of a man who has come to see the
spiritual character of the Law. He sees that he should keep it. It
is indeed a description of a man who "desires" to keep it, but who
finds in practice that he cannot. He sees that the Law is
spiritual; he admires it, he wants to keep it; but try as he will,
he cannot keep it. I suggest that verse 15 says no more than
that--that that is all the Apostle meant it to say at this point.
Otherwise stated, this verse is nothing but an account of what is
true in actual practice of the man described in verse 14. This is
the truth about a man who is "carnal, sold under sin," who
nevertheless sees the spiritual character of the Law. He sees it
but he cannot attain to it. The Law does not enable him to keep
the Law. I end with a question. Does this verse say anything more
than that?

We shall go on to consider the two
inferences the Apostle draws from this striking statement, in
verses 16 and 17.

ROMANS
7:16-20

"If then I do that which I
would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.

"Now then it is no more I that do it,
but sin that dwelleth in me." --.

We continue our study of the closely
reasoned argument which the Apostle develops and applies in this
section of this 7th chapter. He is still telling us certain things
about this "man" whom he is describing. He has already told us
that he is "carnal," and "under sin," and in consequence, that
which he does, he does not allow, he does not understand, he does
not approve of. Indeed he says that that which he wills to do, he
does not do, but what he hates, that he does. Having said that
about the man, and having described the kind of life which this
man lives, he now proceeds to draw two deductions concerning his
whole position.

The first deduction is in verse 16, and the
second in verse 17.

The FIRST deduction is: "If then I do that
which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good." This
is just an obvious and an inevitable piece of logic. The fact that
he regrets his actions, and does not approve of them at all, means
clearly that he agrees with what the Law says about them. And
that, of course, in turn means that his view of the Law is that it
is essentially good and right in all its demands and in all its
condemnations. That is the first deduction.

The word "consent" is an interesting one;
its root meaning is "I speak with." Here is something or someone
speaking; well, I "speak with it," I am in agreement with it, I
approve of it, I praise it. Here I am, says the Apostle, I am
doing certain things which I do not want to do, which I do not
approve of. But the Law, likewise, does not approve of them; it
condemns them. Well then, he says, is it not obvious that I am in
agreement with the Law," Am I not saying that the Law is good? The
very fact that I condemn what I do, and thereby am condemning what
the Law condemns, means that I am in agreement with the Law; in
other words I am proclaiming that the Law of God is good, is
excellent. He has already said that we know it is "spiritual"; he
now says that we also know that it is "good."

The question we have to ask at this point
is, Why does the Apostle speak in this way? Why does he draw that
deduction? He must have some reason for doing so.

I answer: You can tell what a man is
concerned about by the deductions which he draws; and, here, in
these two verses the Apostle reminds us again of his real object
in writing this paragraph. We see again that his object was not
merely to state his experience--that is not what he is concerned
to do at all--he is concerned to prove something concerning the
Law.

Firstly, he intends to show that the Law
itself is in no way responsible for his failure in practice. "Here
is my position," he is virtually saying; " "I do that which I
would not"; well, clearly, the Law is not responsible for my sin.
At heart, I am in agreement with the Law and regard it as good. It
is obvious, then, that the Law is not responsible for the way in
which I am living." He was most concerned to say this, because he
was being charged by some of his opponents as saying that "the Law
is sin." He was also charged with saying that the Law "was made
death" unto him. He is answering these charges and saying that,
whatever is responsible for his failure in practice, it is not the
Law.

A related purpose is to show that his
teaching concerning the Law does not involve any criticism of the
Law in and of itself, still less a condemnation of the Law. That,
again, was a charge that was being brought against him. There were
various Jews who were saying that his preaching of what he called
"the doctrine of grace" was nothing but an attack upon the Law, a
denouncing of the Law. His answer is, that the very fact that he
denounces the things he does, that he does that which he would
not, is proof positive that he consents to the Law "that it is
good." His preaching of salvation by grace, and of justification
by faith only, is not a criticism of the Law, for he regards the
Law as "good." There is nothing wrong with the Law. His failure is
not in any sense due to the Law. So, once more, the Apostle makes
a statement which should keep us on the right lines in our
exposition.

He is dealing with the Law, what the Law
can do, what the Law cannot do--the place of the Law in God's
economy and scheme and plan of salvation.

That brings us to the Second deduction in
verse 17. "Now then," he says, "it is no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me." How does he arrive at this deduction? He
seems to say, "What I have just been saying raises a problem. Here
am I, saying that what I do I do not want to do, I do not will to
do. I do not approve of it, and I am in agreement with the Law
which condemns it." The question then immediately and obviously
arises, How does sin happen at all? Why does this man sin at all?
It is clear that it is not the Law that does it. Well then, what
does? "Here is my problem," Paul seems to say, "the Law is not
responsible, and I myself do not want to do these things. I
believe that they are wrong, I reprobate them; nevertheless I do
them. What is responsible? How does this come to pass?" His answer
is one of the most daring, and one of the most profound things
that has ever been said; it is one of the most astonishing
statements in the whole of the Bible. It must clearly be handled
with great care. This is what he says: "I agree with the Law and
with what it says, and with what it prohibits. Therefore I hate
sin; I do not desire to do it." How, then, is sin committed, and
why?, is the question that inevitably meets him, and he replies:
"It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." It is a
logical deduction, it is an inevitable deduction once
more.

But what precisely is the Apostle saying
here? This is not only one of the most daring sayings in the
Scripture; it is at the same time one of the most difficult. Who
is this "I" to whom the Apostle is referring? In verse 16, "If
then I do that which I would not"--does the "I" refer to the same
person in both its uses? In my view, it cannot be so. The first
"I" refers to the whole personality, the man who is speaking, the
man who is acting, the whole man. But the second "I" obviously
does not refer to the whole man. This is now no longer the whole
personality; he is speaking now of a part of himself only. Which
part? I answer: the part of him which has now been able to
recognize the spiritual character of the Law. That is the second
"I." This is where the exposition becomes difficult. The "I" looks
as if it is the same in both cases, but it cannot be. "I
do"--there is the man, the personality acting. Yes, but "I would
not"--there is a special part of the man, the part that agrees
with the Law.

In other words, in verse 16 the Apostle
introduces the division in the personality of this man whom he is
describing. There is a kind of "duality" here, and my contention
is that this duality is introduced for the first time at this
particular point, and it is certainly present here in verse 17.
This is what he says therefore. "Now then, it is no more I that do
it, but sin that dwelleth in me." This "I" in verse 17 is
certainly the "I" to whom the Law has "come" in the way he has
previously described, the "I" who is able to see that the Law is
"spiritual."

We notice, then, that there is a duality in
the man whom the Apostle is describing. He is able to say, "There
is that in me now"--and he wants to identify himself with
this--"that sees and agrees with the spiritual character of the
Law, and therefore dislikes and disapproves the things I do." As a
whole he is against this, but the man the Apostle is describing is
a man who is divided in himself-- "It is no more I that do it."
Now this "I," I maintain, is this aspect of the person that has
come to realize that the Law of God is spiritual and good, and
that what it prohibits should be prohibited. He agrees with that
whole-heartedly. That is the "I" he is describing here.

We look next at the second phrase which
reads, "sin that dwelleth in me." The Apostle here tells us two
things about sin. The first is that sin is something that "dwells"
in us, takes up its home in us. In other words, we must not think
of sin as something that is altogether outside us. There are many
who think of sin in that way. Man they regard as more or less
neutral; and sin is that which comes from the outside as a
temptation to us. But here we learn that sin is something that
"dwells," makes its home within us, takes up its abode, is a part
of us.

The other thing the Apostle emphasizes is
sin's terrible power. "Now then, it is no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me."

This is one of the profoundest statements
with respect to sin in the whole of the Bible. The Apostle says
that even though you are enlightened as to the spiritual character
of the Law of God, it is not enough. Knowledge alone can never
solve this problem, it has already failed to do so. What man needs
is not knowledge; it is power. The problem of sin is not a problem
of knowledge, of instruction or of information. Here is a man who
has it, says Paul, "I do that which I would not." "I consent to
the law that it is good"--I am in absolute agreement with it yet
here I am doing the exact opposite.

What explains this? "It is not I," says
Paul, "it is sin that dwelleth in me." I say again that it is one
of the profoundest statements that has ever been made with regard
to the nature of sin, and the whole problem of sin.

But in order to see the matter still more
clearly, let us glance at verses 18-20, because these verses are
really nothing but an extended explanation of the statement in
verse 17. In verse 17 Paul has made a startling claim and reached
a staggering conclusion; so he feels it is necessary that it
should be amplified. He proceeds to this in these three verses.
First of all--"For," connecting with what has just been said, "For
I know that in me (that is to say, in my flesh), dwelleth no good
thing: for to will is present with me, but how to perform that
which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not; but
the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would
not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." In
other words, at the end of verse 20 he is back to what he said in
verse 17.

Here we see the extreme difficulty of
expressing in human language the truth with which the Apostle is
grappling. I say that once more in order to encourage those who
may find all this very difficult. I assure you that I myself find
it very difficult. This is one of the most difficult passages that
one is ever called upon to handle; hence the various disagreements
about it. I will go further. I believe that even the Apostle
himself found this difficult. You may ask how I could ever make
such a suggestion. It is because I find him inserting a statement
in brackets. "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no
good thing." Why did he use these brackets and interject that
particular qualifying statement? In my view it was because he knew
well that when those Christians in Rome were listening to someone
reading this Letter to them--remember that they did not have it in
print as we have; someone would read out the Letter and they would
listen--they might well find it difficult to follow the argument
with this frequent use of "I." So he proceeds to help them and to
clarify his meaning. The statement in verse 17, if you take
trouble to understand it, is quite clear, but the Apostle was a
very wise and loving teacher. He takes nothing for granted, and he
wants to help us; so because of the difficulty of expressing in
words this extraordinary, complicated character of man in sin, and
especially after he is enlightened by the Law, the Apostle now
explains briefly what he means. The qualifying phrase--"(that is
to say, in my flesh)"--is introduced to prevent misunderstanding.
He is working out the duality he has introduced in verses 16 and
17.

You may well feel for a moment that the
Apostle is "making confusion worse confounded." But let none be so
foolish as to complain about Paul's manner of writing. This
subject is difficult because sin is difficult. One of the terrible
things sin did when it came into the world was to introduce
complications. Life in the Garden of Eden, in Paradise, was very
simple until sin came in; but the moment sin entered complications
arose. The first sin had to be covered, and they went and hid
themselves. Then they began to lie, and so the process has
continued ever since. Do not blame the Truth, do not blame God, do
not blame the Law, do not blame the Apostle Paul; it is this foul
sin that has produced these complications in man. It is all
illustrated here most clearly. Let us take the phrases. "For I
know," he says, "that in me dwelleth no good thing." Which "me" is
this? This "me" obviously is the same "me" as the one of whom it
can be said that "sin dwelleth in me." Here he calls it the
"flesh." That is the same thing. There is a "me" in whom sin
dwells. That, he says, is the "flesh." That is the first "me":
"For I know that in me." The "I" who knows this is again the whole
personality. But the "me" is not the whole personality; the "me,"
this first "me," is only a part of this "personality," the "I,"
who knows this. And what he knows about this "me" that is in him
is, that there is no good thing dwelling in him. Sin dwells in
him, yes, but no good dwells in him. There is no good whatsoever
in that part of this man's personality. That is the first
"me."

Then let us go further with the Apostle. He
says next, "for to will is present with me." Is this the same "me"
as the first? It cannot be. Why not? For the good reason that he
has already told us about the first "me" that there is no good in
him at all; but about this "me" he says that "to will" is present
with him. To will what? To will to keep the Law, to do good, and
to please God. So it cannot be the same "me" as the first one. "To
will is present with me," but there is no good at all in the other
"me"; there is a great deal of good in this "me." In other words,
this second "me" is the same as the "I" in verse 17: "Now then it
is no more I that do it." This is the "I" that "consents to the
Law that it is good, that hates that which is wrong, but
nevertheless does it, that delights in the Law of God. So we have
different uses of "me" in this verse.

Then Paul says further, "for to will is
present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find
not." Who is this "I"? Is this "I" the first "me" or the second
"me"? The answer is, neither! Well, who is this "I?" It is the man
himself, it is the whole personality. This "I" at the end of verse
18 is one who is able to speak about the two "me's" that are in
him.

This not only sounds complicated, but it is
complicated; it is the complicated condition of a man who is
enlightened by the Spirit of God and about the Law of God. This is
what he discovers about himself. Have you not done so? Here I am,
a personality, an entity, a being. I am myself, the man I am. But
I can talk about the "me" and the "me" that are in me. There is a
"me" of whom I can say no good. I am personalizing the position,
putting in terms of myself the statement made by the Apostle. I am
aware within myself of a "me," an entity as it were that has no
good belonging to him at all. But I am also equally aware of
another "me" that desires to do good, that consents to the Law of
God, that agrees with it and wants to live the godly
life.

This "I," this person that I am, is able to
look on at both and is aware of both. This is my predicament, to
will is present with me (this second "me"), but how to perform (in
the presence of that first "me" that is in me) I know
not.

Verses 19 and 20 present no new problem
because they are but repetitions of what Paul has already said.
Verse 19 is practically an exact repetition of verse 15, "For the
good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that
I do." He repeats it surely for the reason that this subject is so
difficult to state that you have to go on repeating it; and as you
do so, at last people begin to grasp it. He is just working it out
once more.

What, then, is the Apostle concerned to say
in all this? Let me put it in the form of three conclusions.

1. First, he is not disclaiming
responsibility for his actions or even excusing himself. That is
something that we must never do. But there have been people who
have done so, and it has involved them in the most terrible and
"damnable heresies." To what has it led? It has led to
Antinomianism which has made them say, "Ah, it is not I who am
sinning, it is my flesh that is sinning; I am not responsible, I
do not want to sin, therefore it is not I who am doing these
things." They use the language of the Apostle but in a very
different way from the Apostle. They do it to excuse sin; they go
on sinning and say that it does not matter what a man does. There
was a teaching called "Dualism" in the early Church, which said
that sin belonged only to the body. It claimed that that was
apostolic teaching; that the man himself was saved, it was only
his body that was sinning, and as the body was going to die in any
case, it did not really matter whether he sinned or not. "I do not
sin," they said, "it is my body that is sinning." They were even
saying that our Lord's body was not a real body, for much the same
reason. There is no more terrible and dangerous heresy. The early
Church abominated it. There can be little doubt but that the
Apostle John wrote his First Epistle very largely in order to
counter that heresy. There is an old tradition that John was going
into a public bath on one occasion but that when he heard that one
of the teachers of this foul heresy was using the same bath-house
he would not even enter the building. There is no more terrible
perversion of the Christian teaching than this kind of thing. The
Apostle Paul is not excusing the man he describes here, he is not
disclaiming responsibility for himself; what he is doing is to
make a confession. He is virtually saying: "That is the truth
about me, that is the weakness in which I find myself, that is the
paralysis that I am aware of; that is my useless struggle." He
does not say, "All is well, and it does not matter what I do." No,
he wants to get out of this condition, as he will tell us later
when he says, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" It
is the exact opposite of the foul teaching of Dualism, and the
dangerous trap of Antinomianism.

2. Secondly, we conclude that what the
Apostle is concerned to do here is to show the terrible power of
sin. In other words, as I have indicated throughout, this section
of chapter 7 is a commentary on verse 13. "Was then that which is
good made death unto me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear
sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful." Paul is showing us
what a terribly foul thing is sin. It is in us, it is resident, it
"dwells" in us, and it has this awful power that paralyses us even
when we have come to see the true nature of the Law and therefore
the true nature of sin.

3. Our third and last conclusion is that
Paul is showing us again the complete inability of the Law to
deliver us even when we see clearly its spiritual character, that
it is of God, that it is holy, and just, and good. Though we may
see that with all clarity, it completely fails to deliver us. In
other words, in all this complicated piece of psychology and
self-analysis at its most brilliant, the Apostle is really not
concerned about himself and his own experience as such. He is not
even concerned about this bit of psychological analysis. What he
is concerned to show is that the Law can never deliver us. Our
only hope, as he has already said in verse 4 is, "Wherefore, my
brethren, ye also have become dead to the law by the body of
Christ, that (in order that) you should be married to another,
even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring
forth fruit unto God." While I am married to the Law, even though
I see its spiritual character, I can never bring forth fruit. "How
to perform that which is good, I find not." That is what Paul is
emphasizing. It supplies the most overwhelming demonstration of
the truth that even the "holy," "just," "good" Law of God cannot
deliver man from the thraldom and the tyranny of sin.

It is a wonderful statement. Whatever you
and I may make of it in detail, Paul never forgot what he was
setting out to do. He was not setting out just to talk about
himself; but to demonstrate that he revered the Law of God. But
though it is so essentially and altogether good it could not
deliver man from sin, it was never given in order to do so. It was
given that men might come to see "the exceeding sinfulness of
sin," and be led by it as a sort of pedagogue, a schoolmaster, to
Christ. It was never meant to be an end, but a means to an end.
Paul is showing what "the Law could not do in that it was weak
through the flesh."

All along in his deductions, in his
explanations, he keeps on reminding us that that is what he is
concerned about. He is dealing the whole time with the Law, and
all he says about this "man" is simply to illustrate the truth
about the Law, and how it is rendered null by the flesh, by "the
sin that dwelleth in me."

ROMANS
7:21-23

"I find then a law, that, when
I would do good, evil is present with me.

"For I delight in the law of God
after the inward man:

"But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
--

Thus the Apostle continues the great
argument of this section of the Epistle. He goes on from point to
point, from step to step. He makes a statement and then proves it;
then he takes up another and again demonstrates and proves it. All
is focused, of course, on the place of the Law in the life of the
Christian. That is his main concern. He is concerned to exonerate
himself from various charges that were brought against him; but he
is much more concerned to show the truth about the Law, to show
what the Law was meant to do, and to show particularly what the
Law was never meant to do, and what it most certainly cannot do.
His point is, that in showing all this, he is not in any way
derogating from the greatness of the Law.

We come then to this statement in verse 21,
"I find a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with
me." Obviously in this statement he is in a sense summing up what
he has just been saying. The word "then" tells us so. "Very well,"
he seems to say, "this is what I find, this is what I have
discovered." At the same time he is repeating one of the general
statements he has already made, as found, for instance, in verses
14 and 15: "For I know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal,
sold under sin." But it is not just a repetition. The Apostle
never merely repeats what he has been saying. He does
re-emphasize, but generally you will find that there is a shade of
difference, as is the case here. What he was concerned to show in
the previous three verses, 18, 19 and 20, as we have seen, was why
it is that he performs evil acts though he does not want to do so.
In these verses 21-23, however, he shows why he fails to do what
he wants to do. There are two things that are wrong about this
man; he does what he does not want to do, and also fails to do
what he wants to do. That is the dual aspect of his problem. In
the previous verses he was mainly concerned with showing why it
was that he does the evil that he would not do, and comes to the
conclusion that it is no more he that is doing it, but sin that
dwells in him.

The Apostle now takes up the other side.
Why is it that he cannot do what he really wants to do? He begins:
"I find then a law." Actually what he wrote was "I find the law."
"The" law, not "a" law. What does he mean here by "the law?" He
has been talking about the Law of God before as we know. He says,
"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under
sin. If then I do that I would not, I consent unto the law that it
is good." Is he here talking about that same Law? Clearly he is
not doing so. This is not a matter of opinion, but something that
really can be proved. In verse 22 he says, "For I delight in the
law of God after the inward man." Why does he call it there "the
law of God?" So far he has been referring to it as "the law," and
not as "the law of God," because hitherto he has only been dealing
with "the law of God." But here in verse 21 he is talking about
another kind of law, some other law. So when he comes back to the
Law of God he has to make it clear that that is what he is talking
about. Therefore he says, "For I delight in the law of God after
the inward man" (v. 22). That is his way of telling us that in
verse 21 he was not talking about the Law of God. This is a very
important point for us to remember, because we shall find that he
again uses this term "law" in still another sense. But there
should be no trouble about it if we only pay careful attention to
the way in which the Apostle writes. The reference here then is
not to "the Law of God," neither is he referring to "the law of
sin" that dwells in him.

What, then, is he saying here? He says in
effect, "This is my experience. There seems to be a principle
working in me, indeed it is so constant that I can call it a
veritable law. There seems to be a rule of action within me which
works in such a definite manner that it is virtually a kind of
law; and it seems to determine, to govern and to control what
takes place within me. "I find the law." Or, we can look at the
matter in the following way. Paul virtually says: "What I find is
this, that invariably when I would do good, evil is present with
me. This is something which seems to operate in me much as laws
operate in nature--as the night follows the day, as you get
spring, summer, autumn, winter with such regularity. I find that,
as certainly as I want to do good, equally certainly is evil
there." That is a law of the man's life and experience. It is so
regular, so certain, he says, that it seems to be an absolute
law.

Notice how he expresses the matter--"evil,"
he says, "is present with me." That means "always at hand,"
"always lying near." "Whenever I will to do good, evil is always
there, always asserting itself, jumping forward. The moment I act
with this mind of mine, evil jumps in, persistent in its
opposition, never absent. The moment I will to do good, evil is
there." I thus paraphrase what he is saying.

Verses 22 and 23 are simply an exposition
of this theme. Just as we found that verses 18, 19 and 20 were an
exposition of verse 17, so verses 22 and 23 are an exposition of
verse 21. That is the Apostle's typical and characteristic method.
One cannot imagine a better one. Proposition, then proof; and on
he goes, advancing the whole argument.

Let us see what he has to say. "For," he
says--letting us know that he is going to explain what he has been
saying; "For" this is what it comes to in practice--"I delight in
the law of God after the inward man." Here is a very significant
statement again. Take first of all the word "delight." Notice that
there is a progression in the statements here made about the Law.
Paul began in verse 14 by saying, "We know that the law is
spiritual." In verse 16, "I consent unto the law that it is good."
But now he goes beyond that, and says "I delight in it." He means
by that, not merely that he "agrees" with the Law, or that the Law
is itself spiritual and good and carries his consent and his
approbation. He speaks more strongly, and says, "I rejoice, I
exult in the law of God."

It is a very strong statement. He
undoubtedly had in mind here what the Psalmist tells us in the
First Psalm about the good man whose "delight is in the law of the
Lord," "the law of God."

Then we come to a most important term, "the
inward man." This expression plays a very great part in the
discussion of the exact interpretation of this passage. Those who
hold the traditional Reformed view have to lean very heavily upon
it in their endeavour to prove that this is the regenerate man
even at his very best. So they say that the "inward man" means the
new man that is in this person. But it does not follow of
necessity that this is a reference to the "new man" that is in the
believer, for it seems to me that the Apostle himself tells us
what he means by the "inward man" in the next verse. The verses
read: "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I
see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind."
The second part of the statement supplies an explanation of what
is meant by the "inward man" in the first part. The "inward man"
is surely synonymous with "the mind." "I delight in the law of God
after the inward man," "the law of my mind"--"the law that is in
my mind." Surely these are parallel statements. So the inward man,
I deduce, is the mind, the understanding, the place of reason, the
place where one is able to grasp truth. It means a mind
illuminated by the Holy Spirit. But I cannot see that we are
entitled to claim more for this term than just that. The matter
will become clearer when we see how Paul contrasts the "inward
man" with his "members."

What do the "members" represent? The word
"members" stands for "the bodily organs," that part of man through
which he normally expresses himself and functions in his general
life in this world. So the contrast is obvious. The parts of us
with which we normally sin are the parts that we can see, the eye
and various other parts, normally termed the organs of the body.
That is the outward man. But the "inward man" is the part of man
that you cannot see. You cannot see a man thinking, you cannot see
a man's mind. It is possible to see his brain but you cannot see
his mind. That is why Paul calls it the "inward man" as distinct
from this outward man that is visible. The "inward man" is
described as the "hidden man of the heart"; it is that part of man
which is not visible. This is as real, indeed much more real, than
the things you can see; it goes on when the body is rotting in the
grave. I say the "inward man" stands for that invisible part of
man, the most vital part of man--soul, spirit and so on--and
including the "mind," which is often used interchangeably with
'spirit." Take, for instance, the way the Apostle puts the matter
in 2 Corinthians 4:I6. He says, "Though our outward man perish."
Here he is referring to his body. He suffered much from sickness
and illness, he suffered from weariness of the body, his "outward
man" was decaying and dissolving. "Though our outward man perish,
yet the inward man is renewed day by day." It is the same emphatic
general contrast. It seems to me, therefore, that we have no right
to press this term, the "inward man," beyond this general
reference to that part of man that can be illuminated by the
Spirit; we must think in terms of the mind, the understanding,
that part of man which eventually comes to see the truth as it is
in Christ Jesus fully. We may take it, therefore, that Paul is
here referring to the "mind," as he calls it here in verse 23, as
illuminated by the Spirit. In other words, what he is saying in
effect is: "I have now come to see the true meaning of the Law."
He has been saying that repeatedly since the 7th verse. There was
a time when he was not illuminated, but now he has come to see the
truth. The Holy Spirit has come upon him, the Law has "come" and
he has seen it--"sin revived, and I died." He sees that the Law is
spiritual, that it is just, and right, and good, that it is holy;
he even "rejoices in it."

So we pause once more and look at his
statement. "I delight in the law of God after the inward man."

We have now reached this point. The Apostle
finds that his daily constant experience is that the moment he
wills to do good this other principle or "law" is there,
suggesting, arguing. The fact is, he says, "I delight in the law
of God after my mind, my understanding, what I really regard as
myself (not my organs, not my body, not my flesh as it were, but
this higher part of me); I delight in the law of God."

Why then does he not carry out the Law of
God and live it and practise it? His answer is: "I see another law
in my members." Here, again, we have a verse of crucial
importance, as I remarked previously about verse 14. When we were
dealing with verse 14, I emphasized that it seems to me to control
its entire context. I say the same about this verse; so let us
look at it very carefully. Paul says "I find another law." Now
"another" does not mean another in a numerical sense, as if he
meant, "I have already found one law in my mind but now I find a
second." No! What he means is a "different law," not merely
additional, but essentially different. He contrasts it with the
law that is in his mind. There is a law in his "mind," and there
is a law in his "members." Obviously this latter is not "the law
of God," obviously it is not the law that operates in his mind now
that he has come to see the real meaning of God's Law. No, this is
yet another law. What he means is, that there is a permanent and
controlling power and principle in his members that acts as a
veritable law. It is not something that is there occasionally, and
at other times absent; it is always there, it is a law, always
present and always operating. That is why he calls it "a law in
his members."

"Members" carries the same meaning, as we
have seen, as "members" in the whole of chapter 6. It is that
which he contrasts with the mind. This is the way he looks at man
at this point. There is in man his mind; and there is the rest of
him--his bodily organs and appetites, and all the rest. Now there
is a "law" in the mind; and there is a "law" in this other part
also. What does this other law do? He tells us very plainly; in
the first place it "wars" against the law of his mind. This word
"warring" is a very interesting one. "I find another law in my
members, warring against . . .." Its original meaning is "to
render service in a military campaign."

It derives from the Greek word from which
our word "strategy" comes, and that is a very good way of looking
at it. Here then is this man, with his mind delighting in the Law
of God; but there is another law operating in his members which
has a fiendish, devilish strategy. It is always watching the moves
of the other law in his mind, and it is countering every move. It
has a definite strategy and wages a kind of military campaign.
What Paul means is, that as certainly as he delights in the Law of
God with his mind, and wants to do it, then this other law that is
in his members begins to urge the opposite, and puts its
opposition in an attractive form, and strives to dictate to him
what he should do. He wants with the mind to serve the Law of God;
but this other power brings out all its forces and reserves to
prevent his doing so, and to make him do the exact opposite. That
is what the Apostle emphasizes here. In this same verse he later
calls it "the law of sin." The "law in his members" and "the law
of sin" are identical.

Such then, is the picture. The first thing
this "law in his members" does is to wage this war against the
spiritual view of the Law, and his desire to keep it because he
now delights in it. But unfortunately it does not stop at that.
That would be bad enough, but it goes a stage further. It is not
merely that the "law in the members" is warring against the "law
of the mind," but Paul adds, "it brings me into captivity to the
law of sin which is in my members."

The crucial statement is, "brings me into
captivity." All commentators agreed that "captivity" is a very
strong word, and that it means, "making and taking prisoner." The
original meaning of this word takes us back to a "spear," so the
picture is this. Here are two men who have been fighting. One
beats the other, and the conqueror now points his spear at the
body of the man he has conquered. He has taken him prisoner. But
he has not merely taken him prisoner, he has his spear pointed at
him, and he says, "If you try to get away I shall push this spear
through you. You are to walk from here to that door, go along."
And he follows him with the spear pointing at him. The defeated
man is a complete captive, he is conquered, and he is absolutely
helpless at the point of the spear. That is the kind of thing,
says Paul, that I find. I see this other law in my members warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity--into a
position in which I am a hopeless prisoner at the point of the
spear.

My captor has "got" me. Such is the meaning
of the word "captivity."

Notice that Paul says, "bringing me into
captivity." We are not looking now at either of the "me's" we were
considering earlier in verse 18; we are now looking at the man
himself, the "I." This is the total personality. Paul is not
merely saying that this "law in the members" brings the sinful
part of him into captivity, though some of the expositors tell us
so. But the moment they do so, they are falling into the dangerous
heresy of Dualism, in which they are saying, "It is not I who am
in captivity, it is only my sinful part; it is only my body, or
something else within me." That is a wrong division of man which
says "I am not sinning; it is only my body, or the sinful part of
me, or the flesh. The law of sin in my members is sinning." But
the Apostle is not saying that at all. He says it brings me, my
total personality, into captivity. "I" am brought "into captivity
to the law of sin that is in my members."

What then is the real meaning and purpose
of this statement which, I repeat, is such a crucial one? Let us
be clear first of all as to what Paul is not saying. Marcus
Rainsford, a great commentator and godly preacher of the end of
last century, says that the Apostle is "referring to the fact of
the presence, power and tendency of indwelling sin as warring
against the law of his mind," and to nothing more. He italicizes
the word "tendency," and says that Paul is stating in very graphic
language that there is this tendency for that part of him to "war
against the law that is in my mind." To which I reply that Paul is
saying no such thing. Paul is not merely describing a warfare. He
does so at the beginning of the verse, but he says that the
warfare leads to defeat, to captivity. He has himself been taken
captive. He is not talking about a tendency to sin, he is talking
about a captivity to sin.

But take also the exposition of Robert
Haldane. Haldane was clearly in trouble here. He says, "How far
this captivity extends cannot be known from the figure." I agree
with him so far, but I regard it as significant that he should
have had to make that comment. He says, "If the evil principle of
our nature prevails in exciting one evil thought, it has taken us
captive. So far it has conquered, and so far we are defeated and
made prisoners." Then he goes on to say, "But this is quite
consistent with the supposition that, on the whole, we may have
the victory over sin." So what Paul is saying here is this: "If
you commit one sin you have been taken prisoner and made captive
by sin, but on the whole you still have the victory over sin." But
listen to Paul again, "I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the
law of sin." How can that possibly mean "that on the whole we may
have the victory over sin?" Surely that is the exact opposite of
what Paul is saying. He is most certainly not saying that on the
whole we may have the victory over sin, but that on the whole sin
is having a victory over us! The Apostle is saying that, looking
at his life on the whole, this is what this man "finds," this is
the law of his being, this is the regular state of his
experience.

What the Apostle is asserting is that not
merely is there a fight going on within the man (that is the first
part of verse 23), he tells us about the result of the fight, the
outcome of the fight. And the outcome of the fight is, as I am
emphasizing, that he finds himself in captivity, he fails
completely. The law that is in his members is too strong for the
other law. "I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is
present with me. Though I delight in this law of God after the
inward man, this other law keeps on coming in and brings me into
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."

Proof of the correctness of this exposition
is found in verse 24. If Paul is saying here that on the whole
this man is able to live the Christian life, and that on the whole
he has victory over sin, why, in the name of all reason, does he
go on to cry out in anguish, "O wretched men that I am!?" That
would be meaningless, senseless! His cry, "O wretched man that I
am!" is caused by the persistence of defeat, the feeling that he
is down rather than up, that he meets with failure rather than
success, that he is in captivity to sin. I cannot see how any
other exposition of verse 23 can possibly lead us to verse 24. If,
in verse 23, he is merely describing the fact that there is a
conflict in the life of the believer, that would not lead to the
cry "O wretched man!" There is nothing that leads to that cry
except defeat, failure. "Wretched" is a cry of anguish and of
hopelessness; there is a tinge of despair in it. The very word
suggests this. All the Lexicons say so. "Wretched" means
"exhausted as the result of hard labour." Paul has been striving
until he is weary and tired out and wailing; and so he cries out
"O wretched man that I am!" And then he cries out, "Who shall
deliver me?"

In a most amazing way, again, Robert
Haldane says at this point that this "shall" refers entirely to
the future. He knows that he will never be delivered while he is
in this life and in this world; but he knows that at the end, in
death, Christ will finally deliver him out of the body and its
thraldom, and he will have a glorified body. "Shall," he says, is
entirely future. Such is the position in which you inevitably find
yourself if you have started in the wrong way in your
interpretation of this passage. This, surely, is not a reference
to some remote distant future. Here is a man in anguish, in
failure and exhaustion, who cries out, "Who shall deliver me?"
"Who can deliver me?" He is not a man who is expressing a hope as
to what is going to happen at death, he is crying out in despair
for deliverance now.

The next expression to consider is, "the
body of death." We need not linger over this. It is the same as
"the law of sin in my members," of which Paul has just been
speaking. At the end of verse 23 he says, "This is the trouble,
that this other law in my members is bringing me into captivity to
the law of sin that is in my members." Then, "Who shall deliver me
from this law of sin that is in my members?," which he now calls
"this body of sin," "this body of death." He wants deliverance
from this part of himself that is opposed to the "inner man," to
"the law of the mind." He wants to be delivered. In order to bring
out the meaning I refer to Marcus Rainsford again, in order to
bring out the positive exposition. He says "that Paul was really
saying "O wretched man that I am!" to have anything in me contrary
to my God, contrary to His Christ, contrary to His Cross, contrary
to His Spirit, contrary to His will." In Rainsford's view, we see
here the regenerate man, who finds intolerable the thought that
there is in him anything contrary to God, and to all that pertains
to God. To which my reply is this: Does a man who knows Christ as
Savior, who knows the glory of the Cross, and who knows about the
Spirit, simply cry out saying "Who shall deliver me?" Does he use
this indefinite term "Who?" No, the man of whom Paul is speaking
is a man who does not yet know who can deliver him. All he knows
is that he cannot deliver himself. His knowledge of the Law cannot
help him; he "delights" in it, but still it is of no value because
this other "law" is too strong for him. So he says, "Who can? I
cannot." The man who knows Christ as Saviour, and the work and
power of the Holy Spirit as a reality, can never cry out vaguely
and indefinitely and desperately, "Who can?" But this man asks and
cries "Who can?" He is in trouble, he is in a desperate plight.
All these statements go together, and hang together, and each one
comes out of the other. This man is wretched, conscious of
complete failure, aware that there is this other power in his
members that he cannot master but which is mastering him, and
always taking him into captivity. He is a complete failure and
hopeless, so he cries out in his anguish, "O wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver me?" He is not bemoaning the fact that there
is still something in him "contrary to his God, his Christ, the
Cross, the Spirit." On that other exposition all this has to be
imported; but it is not present. It is present in the next chapter
in great profusion, but not here. And yet we are concerned about
the man who is described here, the man who is in a position in
which he can simply cry out, "Who shall, can, will deliver me?"
There he is! What astounds me is that these great men, because of
the controlling theory with which they began, could allow
themselves to resort to these twists and turnings of
exposition.

We still have to glance at the remaining
statements; and then we shall gather up all this evidence we have
been accumulating, and try to collate it all, and put it all
together, and see the composite picture of the man that is
depicted here by the Apostle. We have seen something else; that it
is the picture of a man who has come to see the spiritual nature
and character of the Law.

ROMANS
7:25

"I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law
of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." --

Here, we come to the last verse, the last
statement in this most extraordinary complex statement.

It is divided into two sections.

The first statement is, "I thank God
through Jesus Christ our Lord." I have described that earlier as a
kind of ejaculation. The Apostle is suddenly carried away by what
is described so rightly as "a strong and sudden emotion of
gratitude." We have had many occasions to observe and to emphasize
the fact that the great Apostle was not over-punctilious in the
matter of style. He was free and enjoyed the freedom of the
Spirit. He was not a mere writer, not a mere literary man, not
concerned, primarily, to produce some masterpiece of literature.
He was much more concerned about what he said than the way in
which he said it. The Apostle never cultivated "art for art's
sake," never attempted eloquence for the sake of eloquence. He
shows this in these anacolutha, so called, these interruptions
which frequently take the form of his bursting forth into praise
and thanksgiving. He finds it difficult always, one gathers, to
mention the Name of our Lord without uttering some kind of
apostrophe. He interrupts what he is saying for the moment as he
is carried away by the strength and the depth of his deep
emotions. And here, it seems to me, that is what is happening. It
occurred in this way. He had been saying, "I delight in the law of
God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" At that
point he could not restrain himself so he cries out, "I thank God
through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is a sudden outburst, an
ejaculation, and not an essential part of what he is arguing and
saying.

We can prove that quite simply by looking
at the rest of the verse where he goes on to say, "So then with
the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law
of sin." It proves my contention in this way, that if the
expression "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" is an
essential part of the argument it would mean that he is saying, "I
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord for the fact that I myself
with my mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin." Now that is something, surely, that the Apostle could never
say. That would be an "unnatural combination" of statements. It
would not only be an "unnatural combination," it would be an
impossible combination; because if you take them as being directly
connected in that way it must mean that he thanks God in the Name
of Jesus Christ for the fact that he is still in the condition he
describes in the remainder of the verse. Surely that is quite
impossible! The only commentator, as far as I am aware, who
attempts to say that that is the order is Robert Haldane. He is
quite consistent with himself right through. As I have suggested
previously, he really went wrong in the 2nd verse of chapter 6 and
has had to struggle to maintain consistency from that point. As we
have already seen, he interprets "Who shall deliver me?" in verse
24, as referring entirely to the future. So he says that the
Apostle is saying, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord that
I shall be delivered"--not in this world but in the next. While
still in this world his position is, "So then with the mind I
myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin."
But it seems to me that that is an impossible interpretation of
these statements. The "So then" in the second statement is a
perfect summing up of what the Apostle has been saying from verse
14 to verse 24; a terse and concise statement about this duality.
This, then, he says, is what it amounts to, "With the mind I
myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin."

There is only one difficulty, not a vital
one, but more or less mechanical, in the interpretation here; it
relates to the expression, "I myself." He is undoubtedly referring
to himself, the person; but does the "I myself" govern both the
statements, the two parts of the one general statement? In other
words, is he saying, "So then with the mind I myself serve the law
of God, but with the flesh I myself serve the law of sin?" It
seems to me that, in the light of verse 23, we must so read the
sentence. We cannot be certain about it. It could equally well be
said that he is identifying himself, as he wants to do, with "the
mind," and that "the mind" is the real "I" now; as if it read: "My
real desire and will is to identify myself with the mind, but I
find this other law in my members and so I have to admit that I
serve the law of sin also." In other words he is not disclaiming
responsibility, as we saw before. It is he who sins and not only
his flesh. Of course, he has told us, "It is not I, but sin that
dwelleth in me," but we have seen the explanation of that
statement. He as a person is responsible for everything he does,
but he is aware of these two "me's" within him as we saw in verse
18. Notice that the word he uses is the word "serve." It means
"slave," "to be a slave to" or "a slave of," as we saw repeatedly
in chapter 6. So he is saying, "With the mind I myself am a slave
to, or slave it to, the law of God." He cannot say that he is only
the slave of "the law of God," for he finds also that he is a
slave to "the law of sin" because of his flesh. That is his
trouble; that is the thing he has been telling us so
frequently.

A question arises at this point which we
shall have to consider when we come to our summing up--Is it
possible for the regenerate man to make the statement of verse 25
in the light of chapter 6, verse 17, where he says, "But God be
thanked that ye were the slaves of sin, but ye have obeyed from
the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered?"
There he asserts very strongly that Christians are no longer
slaves to sin. Indeed he goes on in the next verse to say, "Being
then made free from sin, ye became the slaves of righteousness."
We shall consider the matter later in greater detail.

We have now reached the end of our detailed
verse-by-verse consideration of this most interesting and
difficult passage which starts at verse 14. Let us now look at it
again as a whole.

First, let us try to have clearly in our
minds the Apostle's main purpose. Leaving out the detail, what is
his big statement concerning the man who is in view--whoever or
whatever he may be--from verse 14 to the end of the chapter? We
have seen very clearly that he is a man who is conscious of a
duality within himself. The Apostle tells us so many times over.
He is a man who has come to see that the Law of God is both
spiritual and good; indeed he delights in it. But--and here is the
problem--he cannot conform to it either positively or negatively.
He desires to do the things it commands, but he finds that he
cannot do so. He does not want to do the things it prohibits, but
he finds that he does them. He sees clearly the character of the
Law but he cannot keep it, the reason being that "the law of sin"
which is in his members is too strong for him.

The Apostle has stated all this quite
clearly in the following verses: in verse 17, "It is no more I
that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." This power of sin within
him is stronger than himself, so much so that he can make this
kind of statement. In verse 20 again, "Now if I do that I would
not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." Sin
is too strong for him, it defeats him. But it is still more
explicit in verse 23, "I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the
law of sin which is in my members." Now these statements have only
one meaning. The "law of sin" which is in his members, that is to
say, indwelling sin, is too strong for him, and brings him into a
state of captivity. The final proof of that is the cry in verse
24. He is "a wretched man," and he breaks out into the cry, "Who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And, finally, he
sums it all up in the second part of verse 25, "So then with the
mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin." There is only one conclusion that he can come to about
himself; it is the confession he made at the beginning of the
whole section--"I am carnal; sold under sin." In other words, the
business of verses 15-25 is to expound that statement. As so often
with this Apostle--and with many another New Testament and even
Old Testament writer--he starts with his conclusion and then
proves it and demonstrates it. He has told us at the beginning "I
am carnal; sold under sin." That is the only conclusion at which
this man can arrive about himself. Not only is there this duality
within him, but he is made captive by the law of sin which is in
his members. It is stronger than he is, it is defeating him, and
he cries out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?" That is the essential statement, the
vital statement, which is made in this most fascinating
paragraph.

Are we now in a position to decide, to
arrive at a verdict, as to the identity of the person whom the
Apostle is describing?

So we are left with the question, Is this,
then, a description of the regenerate man? Is it true to say that
the Apostle Paul was writing here about himself, and particularly
about himself as he was at the time when he wrote the Epistle to
the Romans? I mentioned previously the argument about the use of
the present tense. Is it right to say that the regenerate man is
always as here described, that he never rises at all above what is
here described, and that it is indeed the Apostle Paul writing
about himself at the height of his experience as an Apostle of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? What of that exposition? It is a
very good rule when you are dealing with a difficult passage of
Scripture such as this not to be too anxious to arrive at a
decision solely and exclusively on the evidence that is before
you. Whenever you meet with such a passage, the first thing you
should ask yourself is, Are there similar passages elsewhere in
the Scripture? Can I find any light on this problem that is
confronting me by referring to other parts of Scripture--other
parts of Scripture written by this same Apostle, or parts of
Scripture by other writers? There is no better rule than to
compare Scripture with Scripture when you have a difficult passage
to interpret. Heresies have arisen in the Church because people
have founded a whole doctrine on one verse, or one section, and
have omitted to consult other sections of Scripture which deal
with the same point. Let us observe the rule ourselves.

Our next step, therefore, is this. There
are certain passages of Scripture which, it is argued, say exactly
the same thing as the Apostle is saying here in the 7th chapter of
Romans. So let us look at some of the passages to which reference
is made. They can be readily divided into two groups. There are
passages which seem to be describing the same kind of struggle as
is described by the Apostle in this 7th chapter of Romans. There
is, for instance, the statement in the Epistle to the Galatians in
chapter 5, verse 17, "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one
to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Let
us admit at once that, at first sight, one is tempted to say "That
is the very thing the Apostle has been saying here in Romans 7."
There are these two sides, the "flesh lusting against the Spirit,"
and "the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one
to the other." Surely this is the same as saying that the mind on
the one hand, and the law in the members on the other, are
contrary the one to the other, with the result that you cannot do
the things that you would. At first sight it seems to be an exact
parallel, but the moment you examine it, and especially when you
read the context, you will find that the two statements are indeed
almost entirely different. Notice, for instance, that the Apostle
introduces the statement in Galatians 5:17 by saying, in verse 16,
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
lust of the flesh." In a sense there is no need for us to go any
further. The Apostle lays down a fundamental proposition: "If you
walk in the Spirit" (and I am commanding you to do so) you shall
not fulfil the lust of the flesh." But what we are told in Romans
7 is, that in spite of every resolution to keep the Law of God,
the man remains captive to "the law of sin which is in his
members." And again, notice that there is a factor in the passage
in Galatians which is not present at all in Romans 7. It is the
reference to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not mentioned in
Romans 7. The whole point of the passage in Galatians 5 is to
emphasize the Spirit and His work. "This I say then, Walk in the
Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." The
Apostle's object in Galatians 5 is to show the way of victory, and
not only to show it, but to guarantee it because of this other
factor--the Holy Spirit who is within us. But that is not
mentioned in Romans 7. But there is also another point of
difference. In verse 18 of Galatians 5 there is what at first
sight seems a strange statement, "But if you be led of the Spirit,
you are not under the law." This verse is an exact parallel with
what the Apostle says in Romans 6:14, which, as I have been
emphasizing throughout, is as it were the key to the whole of
Romans 7. Romans 7 is in a sense an exposition of Romans 6:14
which says, "Sin shall not have dominion over you," and for this
reason, that "you are not under the law, but under grace." Paul is
saying the same thing in Galatians 5:18, though in a different
way. He is showing, not only the possibility of victory, but the
certainty of victory to those who realize this truth about
themselves in Christ, and in "the Spirit." Then, to add still
further proof, there is the statement in Galatians 5:24, "And they
that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and
lusts." There is not a word about that in Romans 7--not a word!
But in Galatians he says that that is true of all Christians.
Because they are Christ's they have done this; it has happened,
they have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. The
whole trouble with the man in Romans 7 is that he cannot do this.
His problem is that the flesh is too much for him, and that he is
being held captive all along to "the law of sin which is in his
members."

We are entitled then to draw this
conclusion, that Galatians 5, far from saying the same as Romans
7, not only says the exact opposite, but was designed to say the
exact opposite. Romans 7 is concerned to show the state of failure
of this man, who is trying, as it were, to sanctify himself by the
Law. The whole point of Galatians 5 is to show us positively the
success and the victory that attend the man who is sanctifying
himself, and dealing with the problem within himself through the
power of the Spirit. He is a man who is able to crucify the flesh
with the affections and lusts and has no excuse for failure. There
is not a word about that in Romans 7; but it will come in chapter
8.

Now take another statement. It is found in
the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 9, verses 26 and 27.
The Apostle is describing men striving for mastery in a race--"I
therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that
beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into
subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to
others, I myself should be a castaway." This, again, is quoted
because people feel that Paul is describing this same conflict
within himself as is described in Romans 7. Now there is no
question but that the Apostle was referring to himself, and to a
present experience, when he wrote 1 Corinthians 9:27; but is that
a parallel with Romans 7. In Romans 7 he says, "I delight in the
law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my
members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." But in 1
Corinthians 9:27 he says, "I do keep my body under," "I beat it
black and blue." That is what his words literally mean. "I pummel
it, I punch it, I keep it under, and bring it into subjection."
Again, it is the exact opposite of Romans 7. He does say, and we
all must say, that the regenerate man does have a war to fight
against sin. But the fact that he has a war to wage does not mean
that he is defeated. But the man in Romans 7 is defeated, in
captivity, sold under sin. In 1 Corinthians 9:27 the Apostle says,
"There is a battle, there is this tendency, sin is there; it is
always ready to take an opportunity; but"--I am putting these
words into the mouth of the Apostle because this is what he is
really saying "but I do not allow sin to reign in my mortal body."
He is in a position not to allow it to reign, in a position to
"keep it under." "I myself keep it under, I keep my body in
subjection, I keep it in order. I am running this race and I do
not intend to be robbed of my prize; I keep under my body, and I
bring it into subjection." The man of Romans 7 would have given
the whole world if only he could have said that. But he could not
say it; that was his problem, his tragedy. He was being brought
into subjection by the law of sin that was in his members, in his
body. It is the exact opposite of that depicted in 1 Corinthians
9:27.

Another passage is sometimes quoted. I
refer to it, even though I do not think that it has any
plausibility. It is found in Chapter 6 of the Epistle to the
Ephesians, from verse 12 onwards, "We wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness
in high places." Interpreters jump at the word "wrestle," because
it seems to suggest what we have in Romans 7; the fight is on! But
there are two answers to this. In Ephesians 6 Paul is not talking
about a struggle against that which is in the flesh. He says as
much. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood." That is not the
essence of the problem he is considering. Rather does he say, "Our
essential problem, in the last analysis, is not sin within us, but
these evil forces, the devil and his cohorts that are outside us."
And even with respect to that he says, "Finally, my brethren, be
strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." As a Christian
you can be strong, you can get a victory! "Be strong in the Lord,
and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God,
that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil," and
defeat him. What would the man in Romans 7 give if he knew that,
and could say that! But he did not know it; that was his whole
trouble. Far from supporting the idea that the man of Romans 7 is
regenerate, the whole point of Ephesians is to show that it is
possible for the regenerate man to be victorious and to stand.
"Having done all things, to stand (in the evil day)." He is a
conqueror; he is not defeated.

These then are the passages that are so
commonly quoted, because they seem to suggest the same kind of
struggle as is described in Romans 7. I trust I have proved that
they say the exact opposite.

We turn now to other passages that belong
to a second group, and which seem to be similar to Romans 7
because they speak about "mourning" and about "groans." From them
it is deduced that the regenerate man "groans" and "mourns," so
surely they establish that Romans 7 is a description of such a
man. The first is in chapter 8 of this same Epistle to the Romans,
verses 13 and 16 in particular: "And not only they, but ourselves
also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit" (here is the
regenerate man), "even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."
Again: "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we
know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit
himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered." There is a perfect parallel, it is claimed, between
these verses and "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?"

But are they parallel statements? To start
with, notice that in Romans 8:23 there is this vital addition,
which is absent from Romans 7--"We who have the first-fruits of
the Spirit." Not a word about that is to be found in Romans 7! But
the argument does not depend upon that alone. The answer to this
interpretation is simply this, that in the relevant section in
Romans 8 the Apostle is not considering the struggle which a man
has with sin within himself, but his struggle with sin in the
world, sin in circumstances, sin in trials and troubles and
tribulations that come to us in this life. Let me prove that. Go
back to verse 17 in chapter 8; "If children, then heirs; heirs of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with
him." 'suffer with Christ"! The words cannot mean suffering
because of sin in the body, because Christ never did suffer in
that way. In this context Paul in Romans 8:17 onwards is dealing
with "suffering with him, that we may be also glorified together."
Observe what he goes on to say: "For I reckon that the sufferings
of this present time" (the sufferings in which we find ourselves
in this world) "are not worthy to be compared with the glory which
shall be revealed in us." And to make it doubly certain he says,
"For the earnest expectation of the creature" (the brute, the
animal creation) "waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of
God. For the creature was made subject to vanity"--he means now,
the animals and everything that is in the brute creation--"not
willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in
hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption." Do these words indicate a fight against
indwelling sin? Do the animals have to fight against indwelling
sin? Of course they do not. What they have to fight is, "nature
red in tooth and claw." The Apostle refers to the kind of "agony"
of the cosmos, the struggle in the whole of life that entered in
because of the Fall, and because, when man sinned, God "cursed the
ground." This struggle belongs to the whole of nature and
creation; "We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth
in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also,
which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan
within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body." In other words, though the Christian is redeemed and
regenerate he is living in a world of sin, a world of sorrow, a
world of pain, a world of suffering, a world of evil, ugliness,
foulness; and he is subject to illnesses and diseases. This is the
theme of Romans 8:17-23. The Apostle does not even consider there
the problem which is dealt with in Romans 7. But how frequently is
this missed simply because he uses the word "groaneth."

"But what about 2 Corinthians 5?" asks
someone. In verse 2 we read, "For in this tabernacle we groan,
earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from
heaven; if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked."
Then again in verse 4, "For we that are in this tabernacle do
groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but
clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." Again
it is claimed that this is a similar case to that of the "wretched
man" of Romans 7. It is argued that the burden is the load of sin,
the "sin that is in my members," this thing that is leading me
into captivity. Here, it is claimed, the regenerate man is
speaking, and we seem to be told that he is "groaning" because of
his burden of sin, and longing for his glorification.

What is the answer? Here again, however, I
must point out that the Apostle is not speaking of the subject
with which he is dealing in Romans 7. His theme is the same as
that of Romans 8, verses 18 to 26. The context proves this. Paul
begins on the theme of 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 in the 7th verse of
chapter 4 of that letter: "We have this treasure in earthen
vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not
of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted . . . " He is dealing
with things outside himself, not inside himself--"persecuted, but
not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about
in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. We which live are alway
delivered unto death for Jesus" sake." This describes the kind of
life Paul was living externally then. "So death worketh in us, but
life in you." "All things are for your sakes . . . For which cause
we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward
man is renewed day by day. Our light affliction"--that is to say,
the things outside ourselves--"which is but for a moment, worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And to
prove that they are outside, he says, "While we look not at the
things which are seen" (outside us), "but at the things which are
not seen." And then follows the 1st verse in chapter 5, "For we
know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved"
if they kill us, if they martyr us--"we have a building of God, an
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." So in this
Corinthian passage the Apostle is dealing with the trials and the
tribulations, the persecutions and the sufferings of Christian
people because they are Christians. It is not at all the same
problem, the same question, as is dealt with in Romans
7.

But I have a further reason for speaking in
this way. If you look for the word "groaned" in the Scripture and
say that every time you find a Christian man "groaning" or "being
burdened" it describes of necessity the struggle against sin
within, then you will find yourself saying that our Lord Himself
had a struggle against sin within. The evidence is as follows.
Isaiah reminds us in his 53rd chapter that the Saviour when He
comes, will be "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." And when
He came He was such. For example, we read in Mark 9:19 that when
He came down from the Mount of Transfiguration and saw His
disciples arguing with the people in the presence of a man whose
son was afflicted with terrible fits, He said, "O faithless
generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer
you?" Again, look at the account of our Lord at Bethany at the
sepulchre of His friend Lazarus, in John's Gospel, chapter 11,
verse 33 onwards, "When he saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also
weeping with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled."
Indeed in verse 35 we read, "Jesus wept." He was burdened, He
groaned in the depth of His spirit, He was troubled in His spirit
and He wept. Look at Him some time later in the Garden of
Gethsemane. This is what we find; "And being in an agony he sweat
as it were drops of blood." Our Lord certainly "groaned" when He
was in this world. And we "in this tabernacle," says Paul, "we do
groan, being burdened." The Lord "groaned in spirit" for the same
reason. Not because of "sin in the members," but because this is a
world of sin, because of all that sin has done to God's
world.

Why did Christ weep and groan at the grave
of Lazarus? "Oh, it was His natural human sympathy," says someone.
But that cannot be, because He knew that He was about to raise
Lazarus and restore him to his sisters. No, He wept because He was
face to face with this horrible thing called death that had come
into the world as the result of sin, and which was going to lead
in a short while to His own death and separation from the Father.
That is the meaning of "Jesus wept," that is why He "groaned and
was troubled in spirit," though He knew He was going to raise
Lazarus. He was looking at sin and its consequences in the world,
looking at sin objectively as Paul does in Romans 8:18-23, and
also in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5. Indeed the Apostle puts this quite
explicitly in the Epistle to the Colossians in chapter 1, verse
24, where he says, "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and
fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my
flesh for His body's sake, which is the church." That is exactly
the same thing. He has entered into such intimate communion with
His Lord and Saviour that he really feels something of what the
Lord Christ suffered when He was in this evil world. The sight of
it all, and the realization of it all, made him groan. "In this
tabernacle we do groan, being burdened." Though we are saved, and
rejoicing in that salvation," the world is nevertheless a "vale of
tears," a "land of woe." That is what the Apostle says in Romans 8
and also in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5.

We conclude therefore that the statements I
have quoted which, because they have this idea of burden and
trouble and tribulation and agony and groaning, appear on the
surface to be saying what Paul is saying in Romans 7, clearly and
definitely do not deal with the same subject at all, and therefore
have no relevance in the question of deciding who exactly is "the
man" described in Romans 7, verses 14 to 25. We shall go on to
show that, if these verses are interpreted as applying to a
regenerate man, that interpretation is incompatible with the plain
teaching of this Apostle elsewhere with regard to the regenerate
man. And after that we shall show that it is incompatible also
with the teaching of other New Testament writers concerning the
regenerate man. And even when that matter is resolved we shall
still be left with the suggestion that Romans, chapter 7, is the
description of an immature Christian who has not yet gone on to
receive the "second blessing." That is a very much simpler
question which can be disposed of much more easily.

CONCLUSION

ROMANS 7:13-25

"Was then that which is good made
death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin,
working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the
commandment might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the
law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that
which I do I allow not, for what I would, that do I not, but
what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I
consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I
that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me
(that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing: for to will is
present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find
not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I
would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a
law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I
delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see
another law, in my members, warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. O wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from
the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but
with the flesh the law of sin."

We are engaged in the task of summing up
our conclusions concerning the exact meaning of this famous
portion of Scripture.

We have gone through it in detail, verse by
verse, and have also summed up the essential statement made by the
Apostle. In attempting to decide whether the reference is to the
unregenerate man or to a regenerate man--even Paul himself when he
wrote the letter--or whether it is a description of an immature
Christian, we felt that the best plan to adopt was to see whether
we could find other passages in Scripture which would throw any
light on the matter. We have found that passages which, on the
surface, seem to describe the same conflict, and others which seem
to describe the same "groaning" and state of misery, do not really
provide us with a parallel to what we find in this
section.

The next step is to show that, if this
passage is interpreted as describing Paul's experience at his best
and highest, even as he was when he wrote this Epistle, then it is
incompatible with his plain teaching elsewhere, indeed with plain
teaching elsewhere in the Bible, not only by the Apostle Paul, but
by other writers also concerning the nature of the regenerate
man.

FIRST, let us look at passages in the
writings of the Apostle Paul himself, which. I suggest, exclude
the possibility that he is describing his mature Christian
experience in Romans 7.

Take first the Apostle's other statements
in this same Epistle. The evidence is abundant. I begin with
chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, where he says, "Therefore being
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace
wherein we stand." We emphasized there the "standing"--not a
crouching or a slouching or a lying down we "stand" in this grace,
"and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." Surely the man who
could write that could not at the same time cry out, "O wretched
man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Furthermore, verses 12 to 21 in the same chapter emphasize "the
triumph of the reign of grace." Though "sin has abounded," "grace
has much more abounded." The victory, the triumph, the certainty,
the assurance of it all! This is the Apostle's central message,
his main reason for writing the passage. "Much more" he keeps on
repeating--"much more hath grace abounded." It is always
"abounding" and "superabounding." There is no compatibility
between emphasizing the "superabounding" power and capacity of
grace and crying out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?" The two things do not fit
together in the same person.

When we come to chapter 6, we find that
practically everything Paul says is incompatible with the
interpretation I am opposing. In verse 2, for example, he replies
to the question, "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound?" by saying "God forbid. How shall we that died to sin live
any longer therein?" But here in this second section of chapter 7
is a man who is "brought into captivity to the law of sin which is
in his members." But in chapter 6, verse 2, he says that this is
impossible for the Christian. Having died to sin, it is impossible
for him to continue in sin any longer. Paul says the same in verse
6: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the
body of sin might be destroyed (disannulled, brought to nothing)
that henceforth we should not serve sin." That is the whole object
of salvation, and that is the cause of his rejoicing. In verse 7
he repeats the same truth: "For he that is dead is freed from
sin." Then follows the great exhortation in verse 11, "Likewise
reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto
God through Jesus Christ our Lord." What possible interpretation
is there of that, if this section in chapter 7 is a description of
the regenerate man at his very best? Similarly the exhortations in
verses 12 and 13 would become quite meaningless. "Let not sin
therefore reign in your mortal body"--we must not allow it to
reign there; there is no need for us to allow it to reign
there--"that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof." "Neither
yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin."
There is no need for us to do so, we can stop doing so; we must
stop doing so. But in Romans 7 we have a man who tells us that he
cannot help himself, that he is brought into captivity constantly
by this power which is greater than himself. Then there is the
great assertion of verse 14, "For sin shall not have dominion over
you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace." It is the
very antithesis of this particular interpretation of verses 13 to
25 of the 7th chapter.

But look once more at chapter 6. Take verse
17: "But God be thanked, ye were the slaves of sin, but ye have
obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered
you." Then verse 18: "Being then made free from sin, ye became the
slaves of righteousness." Verse 22, "But now being made free from
sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness,
and the end everlasting life." Such words are not at all
compatible with the statement "I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members. For the good that I
would I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do." The man
cannot do what he wants to do, he does what he does not want to
do. "O wretched man that I am!" It is really astonishing that
anyone who has worked carefully through chapter 6 could
conceivably say that in chapter 7, verses 13-25 describe the
regenerate man at the height of his experience. The appeal in the
19th verse of the 6th chapter would likewise be quite pointless,
"I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your
flesh; for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness
and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members
servants to righteousness unto holiness." That appeal is obviously
addressed to those who have the ability to respond, and not to
helpless, hopeless, defeated captives of sin.

Look next at this very chapter in which
this section comes. I argue that verses 4 and 6 are completely
incompatible with that suggested view of verses 14 to 25. Verse 4
reads, "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also died to the law by the
body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him
who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto
God." Verse 6, "But now we are delivered from the law, that being
dead wherein we were held; that (in order that) we should serve in
newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." These
great assertions make it quite impossible for us to interpret
these later verses in the manner proposed.

Then move on to chapter 8, verses 1 and 2:
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in
Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
hath made me free from the law of sin and death." In verses 13 to
25 of chapter 7 Paul says that the Law leads him constantly to
"sin" and to "death." But he says in verse 3 of chapter 8 that he
has been set free. "For what the law could not do, in that it was
weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin" has done just that. He has "condemned
sin in the flesh, that (in order that) the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us." Not that we should go on failing,
but that "it might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit." Here Paul is describing the
regenerate man; and his words cannot be reconciled with the
interpretation of verses 14-25, chapter 7, which I
oppose.

Again, look at verse 6 of chapter 8: "For
to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is
life and peace." The man of Romans 7 has no peace. "No," he says,
"I am always being led into captivity to the law of sin which is
in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" Is
such a man enjoying peace? But the Apostle says that the great
characteristic of the man who is spiritually minded, that is, the
regenerate man, is that he has "life and peace." It is the exact
opposite of this man who could not find peace, and who cries out
in his agony "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me?"

Then we move on to verse 13 and others in
chapter 8 where Paul makes an appeal. He says, "If ye live after
the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify
the deeds of the body, ye shall live." The implication there, is
that as Christians we can do what he enjoins, and therefore he
tells us to do so. But the whole trouble with the man in Romans 7
is that he cannot do it. He has been trying, and he has failed
completely, he is still in captivity; but in chapter 8 we see a
man who has found a way of freedom and of life.

Then go on further to verses 14 and
onwards: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are
the sons of God." "For you have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear." Who is in bondage? The man who is "in captivity"
is in "bondage." Who is the man that is "afraid?" He is the man
who says, "What is going to happen to me? What can I do? I try, I
want to, but I cannot," and he cries out, "O wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver me?" But to the regenerate the Apostle says,
"Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you
have received the Spirit of adoption, where by we cry, Abba,
Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirits that
we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with
him, that we may be also glorified together." If that is true of
me, am I to go on to say "O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" These things are utter
incompatibilities, they do not breathe the same atmosphere, they
do not belong together at all. No, this man, the regenerate man,
the Apostle Paul when he was writing, was not "hopeless," not
"wretched"; he knows his position and "rejoices in hope of the
glory of God."

Then go on to verses 29 and 30. "For whom
he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the
image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many
brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called;
and whom he called, them he also justified." Now watch the
leap--"and whom he justified, them he also glorified." A man who
understands justification knows that, in a sense, he is already
glorified. Can such a man cry out "O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me?" It is inconceivable, it is impossible. "We know
that all things work together for good to them that love God." If
I know that I am "foreknown" and "predestinated," I know that I
shall be "conformed to the image of his Son." I do not cry out in
despair, "Who shall deliver me?" because I already know the
answer. A wrong interpretation of chapter 7 renders the whole of
this great 8th chapter quite impossible, and especially that leap
from "justification" to "glorification."

In chapter 12 there are further statements
that I cannot reconcile with other interpretations. "I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies even a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world;
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove
what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." That
statement would be enough in itself, if we had nothing else, to
yield a correct interpretation. In chapter 14:17 Paul says, "The
kingdom of God (into which Christians have come) is not meat and
drink." It is not a matter of eating this and not eating that, and
of observing days and various other punctilious; but the kingdom
is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." That is
Christianity; the Christian is to know "righteousness, and peace,
and joy "in the Holy Ghost." Can a man have "the joy of the Holy
Ghost," and at the same time say, "I am constantly being brought
into captivity by the law of sin which is in my members. O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?" Surely the two conditions cannot possibly co-exist in the
same person.

Thus far I have produced evidence from the
Epistle to the Romans itself. Let us now turn to the evidence in
the other writings of the Apostle Paul. I have already quoted 1
Corinthians 9:27, where he says, "I keep under my "body." But look
at what appears to me to be the final answer to this particular
argument in 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, which almost seems to have
been written specially to deal with the very question we are
considering. Look at what Paul says in verses 6 and 7 where his
theme is Law and Gospel, death and life. Observe his
negative--"not of the letter, but of the spirit . . . the letter
killeth." The trouble with the man in Romans 7 is that he was
being killed by the Law. He says in verse 10 of chapter 7, "What
was ordained unto life, I found to be unto death." But Paul tells
the Corinthians that "The law killeth, but the Spirit giveth
life." Then take the phrase at the beginning of verse 7, "the
ministration of death." Paul is writing about the Law of God,
"written and graven in stones," and is actually saying that God's
holy Law given through Moses was nothing other than "the
ministration of death"; and for the very reason that is found in
Romans 7--"That which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto
death." The trouble with the man in Romans 7 is that he is being
killed by the Law. He is made to sin by it; he is killed by it. So
here the Apostle actually uses this quite astonishing phrase, "the
ministration of death," for the Law of God. But look at the end of
that chapter, verses 17 and 18. "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and
where the Spirit of the Lord is"--it can also be translated "Where
the Spirit is Lord"--"there is liberty." In other words, I am not
"brought into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members,"
I am no longer in the flesh; the Spirit is in me, and "the Lord is
that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty."

But the Apostle is not content with saying
that only; he adds to it in the 18th verse. "But we all (the
regenerate) with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of
the Lord . . .." This is the regenerate man, not crying out "Who
shall deliver me?" but "with open face, beholding as in a glass
the glory of the Lord." What happens? "(We) are changed into the
same image (the Lord's image) from glory to glory." We are
progressing and developing; at the end of our lives and when we
are approaching the topmost rung of the ladder of sainthood we do
not say "O wretched man that I am." No; it is rather "we are
changed from glory to glory" --increasing, developing, advancing,
going up--"even as by the Spirit of the Lord." You cannot equate
that with what is said in Romans 7, 14-25; surely they are exact
opposites!

Then turn to Galatians, chapter 2, verse
20: "I have been crucified with Christ." This does not describe a
second experience; it is what happens to every man who is
regenerate. "I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." That is how the
regenerate man speaks. He does not say "O wretched man that I am!
who shall deliver me?"; he says, "Christ liveth in me; and the
life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of
God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Then in Galatians,
chapter 4, "Now I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child,
differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all." We
see here a man "under the law"; but though a child of the family
he resembles a servant. Indeed he may be tyrannized over by the
servants, he may be having a very miserable time, though he is the
heir. "He is under tutors and governors until the time appointed
of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage
under the elements of the world. But when the fulness of the time
was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive
the adoption of sons." And because we are sons, do we cry out
saying, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" No! "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth
the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son,
then an heir of God through Christ." You cannot reconcile these
words with the statement in Romans 7:14 to 25. Again in chapter 5,
from verse 16 to the end of the chapter: "Walk in the Spirit, and
ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh . . . But if we be led
of the Spirit, ye are not under the law . . . They that are
Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts."
Such is the teaching concerning the regenerate in
Galatians.

In Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 19, the
Apostle tells the believers that he is praying for them, "that the
eyes of their understanding may be enlightened." He wishes them to
know "what is the exceeding greatness of God's power to usward who
believe." He knew it himself; he prays that they may know it. Here
is Paul the Apostle, who knows "the exceeding greatness of God's
power to usward that believe," the same power, the Apostle says,
that God exercised "in Christ when he raised him from the dead,
and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far
above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and
every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in the
world that is to come." Then Paul adds: "And hath put all things
under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things unto
the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all
in all." Is it conceivable that a man who knows something about
"the exceeding greatness" of this power towards himself can cry
out, saying "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?"--from this thing that is "bringing me
into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members?" Surely
we are in a different world altogether; the whole situation is
entirely changed.

At the end of Ephesians chapter 3, the
Apostle prays again for these same regenerate people: "That he
would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be
strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know
the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that you might be
filled with all the fulness of God." And he continues, "Now unto
him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask
or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be
glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages." Does the
man who writes in that way say at another time, "Ah yes, but it is
equally true of me to say 'O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?'" Surely that is quite
impossible! The same can be said of the remainder of the Epistle
to the Ephesians, from chapter 4, verse 17 onwards.

But turn to Philippians, chapter 4, verse
4. What kind of people are Christians? judge from the following
words: "Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice." Can
you "rejoice in the Lord alway" if you are conscious that you are
brought constantly into captivity to "the law of sin that is in
your members," and are crying out, "O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me?" These things do not belong together.

Then in the First Epistle to the
Thessalonians -- probably the first Epistle the Apostle ever
wrote--chapter 1:5; "Our gospel came not unto you in word only,
but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance:
as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And
you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the
word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost; so that ye
were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia.; Then
in the 4th chapter, verse 3: "For this is the will of God, even
your sanctification." And in chapter 5, verse 23: "And the very
God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ." This is the Apostle's teaching.

I end this summary of Paul's teaching with
a reference to the man himself. When he speaks of himself, this is
his favourite phrase: "Paul, the bond-slave of Jesus Christ." You
will find it generally at the beginning of his letters. Is it
possible that a man who describes himself in that way should cry
out at the same time, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me?" He has been bought, he belongs to the Lord; he is a
"bond-slave." Listen to him as he writes to the Philippians: "For
me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (1:21). Or consider the
astonishing things he says about himself later in the same
Epistle: "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended"--"but
this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"
(3:13,14). He is not constantly turning round in a circle and
crying out for deliverance; he is "pressing forward." "Let us
therefore," he says, "as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and
if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this
unto you. Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, let us
walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. Brethren, be
followers together of me" (vv. 15-17). Could a man who says of
himself, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" have
the effrontery to stand up and say "Brethren, be ye followers of
me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample?" It
seems to me quite incongruous. Then in the First Epistle to the
Thessalonians; "Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and
justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that
believe" (2:10). I cannot reconcile that with the condition of the
man in Romans 7.

And that brings me to my last statement
concerning this great man. We are told that Romans 7:14 ff.
describes Paul at his best, at his highest, nearing the end of his
Christian life. But we find that at the end of his life he is able
to write in a very different strain. In 2 Timothy 4:6-8 he could
say: "I am ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at
hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I
have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me
at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love
his appearing." Can a man who says that still say of himself, "O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?" It is a sheer impossibility. There, then, is the evidence
for my contention from the writings of the Apostle
Paul.

But let us turn to the writings of the
Apostle John. The entire argument of his First Epistle, written to
regenerate people, is the exact opposite of what is stated here.
Why does John write his First Epistle? He supplies his own answer:
"These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full," and
that "you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our
fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." He
and the other apostles were enjoying that fellowship and he wants
all Christians to enjoy it. It is impossible to reconcile this
with the statement in Romans 7. Then look at John's 3rd chapter
and what he says in verse 9: "Whosoever is born of God doth not
commit sin (doth not go on committing sin), for his seed remaineth
in him, and he cannot sin (continue committing sin) because he is
born of God." And verse 21; "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not,
then have we confidence toward God." But the man in Romans 7 is
utterly condemned by his heart. The same truth emerges in chapter
5, verses 4 and 5: "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the
world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our
faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth
that Jesus is the Son of God?" And then verse 18: "We know that
whosoever is born of God sinneth not" (does not go on living a
life of sin and failure) "but he that is begotten of God keepeth
himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. And we know that we
are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" (in the evil
one). "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an
understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in
him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true
God, and eternal life." Am I to add to that, "O wretched man that
I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Impossible!

The Apostle Peter teaches the same truth in
his Second Epistle, chapter 1, verses 4-10: "All things," he says,
"that pertain to life and godliness, have been given to us:
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises:
that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." In the
light of that, says Peter, this is what you have to do: "Beside
this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, knowledge,
temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity. For
if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall
neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ." The trouble with the man in Romans 7 was that he
lacked that knowledge. "He that lacketh these things is blind, and
cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from
his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to
make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye
shall never fail: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you
abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ." These are descriptions of the Christian man, the
regenerate man.

Finally, to confirm what I am saying, I
would quote our Lord's own teaching. In Matthew 11:28 he says:
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest." He gives rest to the man who cries, "O wretched
man that I am! who shall deliver me?," and who is always being
"led into captivity by the law of sin which is in his members." To
such a labouring and heavy-laden and unhappy man our Lord says,
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly
in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light." It is the exact opposite of Romans
7. Then consider Luke 4 and the account of our Lord's reading of
the Scriptures in the synagogue at Nazareth after his return from
the Temptation in the Wilderness. He read out of Isaiah 61: "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." This being
read, He closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and
sat down. And he began to say, "This day is this Scripture
fulfilled in your ears." That is what He had come to do, and He
claimed to be doing it. That is what He does to all who believe in
Him. He delivers the "captives" and those that are bruised; He
gives sight to the blind. They are no longer
"wretched."

Then there is the notable statement in
John's Gospel, chapter 7, verses 37-39: "In the last day, that
great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man
thirst"--If any man is longing and thirsting for righteousness,
and the power to live according to the Law, if any man is wretched
and unhappy and feels he is a captive to sin--"If any man thirst,
let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water." The Christian believer is not only right in himself, he is
able to send out these streams of blessing and of fructification
to others. "This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe
on him should receive; For the Holy Ghost was not yet given,
because that Jesus was not yet glorified."

Now take the 8th chapter, verse 12; "I am
the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness"--he shall not be groping in darkness and saying, "O
where can I find deliverance? Who shall deliver me?"-- "He that
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light
of life." But look at the still more wonderful verses 34-36 in
that same 8th chapter: "Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Whosoever committeth sin"--whosoever goes on living the
defeated, failing life, a captive to the sin which is in his
members--"Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." That is
precisely what the man in Romans 7 says about himself. Our Lord
continues: "And the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but
the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed." In other words, he will never say again, "O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" Our Lord says it
again in chapter 10, verses 9 and 10: "I am the door: by me if any
man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find
pasture"--full satisfaction! "The thief cometh not, but for to
steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they" might
have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "O
wretched man! who shall deliver me from this bondage, this
captivity, this body of death?" . . . "Life and that more
abundantly." What a complete contrast!

All the Scriptures in their accounts and
descriptions of the regenerate man teach the exact opposite of
what we find here in Romans 7. But we must go further. I suggest
that to interpret Romans 7 in terms of the regenerate man -- Paul
at his best is indeed to place the regenerate man at his best in
an inferior position to the saints of God under Old Testament
teaching. The man in Romans 7 is in a more desperate position even
than David in Psalm 51. David had committed the terrible sin of
adultery, and then murder on top of that. He knows what he has
done, and he knows that he is guilty; but he does not cry out in
despair, "Who shall deliver me?" He wants a clean heart, and is
amazed at himself that he could have done such things. "Create in
me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me." His prayer
is, "Take not thy holy Spirit from me." He was aware of an
essential principle of righteousness. He has fallen, but he is not
in despair about it; he is not in the position of the man in
Romans 7. Psalm 119 also contains verses which make this faulty
exposition quite impossible, as for example, verses 49-65, 97-104,
121, 165-168. We can all work the argument out for
ourselves.

But look at the matter from still another
angle. If Romans 7 is a description of the regenerate man at his
best, then I say that the Old Testament prophecies concerning the
Gospel have not been fulfilled. In Isaiah 35 we read that when the
Messiah comes, when the Gospel age arrives, "the lame man shall
leap as an hart," "the blind will see." "There shall be a way, an
highway, it shall be called The way of holiness; the unrighteous
man shall not walk upon it; but the wayfaring man, though a fool,
shall not err therein." Such words describe what the Gospel
effects. But Romans 7 does not speak thus. Or listen to what the
Gospel does, as described in Isaiah 61: "To appoint unto them that
mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy
for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."
In such words Isaiah had already answered Romans 7 nearly eight
centuries beforehand. These are the blessings of the Gospel
dispensation: beauty, joy, praise! It is the very antithesis of "O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?"

Indeed, I do not hesitate to say that if
you interpret Romans 7 as referring to the regenerate man you are
really excluding the doctrine of sanctification altogether. Or if
not that, it certainly excludes the possibility of any growth in
sanctification.

The argument is: that the more a man
advances in the Christian life the more he is aware of sin within
him, and the more he therefore mourns. So it comes to this, that
the more Christian a man becomes the more miserable he becomes,
and the highest point he reaches will mark the greatest depth of
his misery. Where then is "growth in grace and in the knowledge of
the Lord?" That interpretation really amounts to this, that the
main effect of the Gospel upon man is to increase his misery. The
greater the awareness of sin the greater the misery; therefore the
main effect of the Gospel is to increase misery; and the New
Testament man must be more miserable than the Old Testament man.
It is quite ridiculous, it is impossible.

In conclusion I would say this. The REAL
CLUE to the understanding of this passage in Romans 7 is to notice
that the Holy Spirit and the indwelling Christ are not mentioned;
hence the trouble and the problem. The Holy Spirit, as the
quotations have proved, is the great antagonist of the "flesh" and
of "sin." He gives the victory. But He is not mentioned here; and
as the indwelling Christ and the Holy Spirit within are not
mentioned, this cannot therefore be a full statement as to the
condition and the experience of Paul at the time of writing. Here
we have a man who is analysing himself, and the "me" and the "me"
within him. It is a complete analysis. But when Paul analyses
himself he says, "Yet not I, but Christ that dwelleth in me." This
man does not mention Christ. It is clearly not an analysis of Paul
at the time of writing, or of the Christian at his best. That is
impossible, for such a man must mention the indwelling Christ and
the indwelling Holy Spirit.

But it is said that it is simply one aspect
of Paul. He is not speaking here, they say, of the whole of
himself; you have to take chapter 8 with this chapter to have the
whole Paul. But this man in Romans 7 is definitely and
specifically talking about himself, and the whole of himself. He
has analysed himself-- the "me" and the "me" and the "I." It is
the complete man. So that argument cannot prevail either. In my
view, to say that Paul is describing only one aspect of himself
here makes it incompatible with what he says about himself as a
Christian in the first 17 verses of chapter 8.

"Ah but," says someone, "why not the two at
the same time?" I have already answered that objection. If a man
already knows the answer, why does he cry out, "Who shall deliver
me?" If he knows that Christ does, and can, deliver him, why does
he cry out "Who shall deliver me?" It makes the position
nonsensical. If Paul knows everything that he says in chapter 8
while he is describing himself in chapter 7, why does he give this
description at all? Why does he not say that he is speaking of
"one aspect of my life, one part of me?" But he does not say this.
He is giving a full description of a certain man, and it is quite
incompatible with that of the regenerate man in chapter 8. The man
in chapter 8 cannot use the expressions that Paul uses in verse 14
of chapter 7 where he says, "I am carnal, sold under sin." He
cannot cry out in despair, "O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" When the Christian, the
regenerate man, falls into sin, he does not say "This is terrible,
I am filled with despair, O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me?" He speaks of himself, as he should speak, in terms of
the First Epistle of John: "If we confess our sins, God is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9)" "These things write I unto you,
that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for
our sins" (1 John 2:1-2). The Christian speaks in this way; he
never cries out in despair.

The Christian knows that he has to fight
sin; Paul has dealt with that matter in chapter 6. The Christian's
fight with sin is described there, and in the first part of
chapter 8, not in this section in chapter 7. But notice that the
picture in chapter 6 is of a man who can be confident. He is not a
despairing fighter; he is on top. In the Christian sin is not a
master, and he its slave. Sin to the Christian is an annoyance, a
nuisance; it is something that worries him, and sometimes trips
him up; but it never drives him to despair. He should never go
back "under the law," never feel "hopeless." Not only do I assert
that it is not a regenerate man speaking in Romans 7, I maintain
that a Christian must never speak in that way. Indeed Paul's whole
object in writing was to teach people that they should never speak
in that way. And if that is his object in writing how can he
possibly be writing about himself? The thing is ludicrous. No,
this was not Paul's experience at the height of his
saintliness.

Well, says someone, if that is not the
case, why not say, then, that it is a picture of the incomplete
Christian? Why not say that it is a regenerate man who has not yet
had the "second blessing," a man who is "justified" but not yet
"sanctified"; in other words, that the man is an immature
Christian? The simple answer to that is, that there is no
indication whatsoever of that in the Apostle's words. He does not
say that he is describing himself as he once was, and before he
"passed over" to Romans 8. If he were doing so, he would not be
using the present tense; he would be using the past tense, and
saying, I was like that once upon a time. He has written in that
manner in verses 7-13 where he was describing a past
experience.

No, that is not the answer. That view, of
course, is based on the fallacy that a man can be justified
without being sanctified. It is based on the false view which
drives a wedge between the two and says that we can have the one
without the other. But that is not the teaching of Paul. He
teaches that if we are justified we are "in Christ," we are
married to Him, we are no longer "under the law," His power is
working in us. That is the entire teaching of chapter 6, and
chapter 7:1-6. He cannot go back on what he has already said; that
is quite impossible. Furthermore, that view is based upon a
further fallacy. However young a Christian a man may be, however
immature, it is impossible for him to utter the cry of verse 24.
Even the man who has the first glimmerings of an understanding and
knowledge will never cry out, "Who shall deliver me?" He has
already believed that Christ is his Saviour, so he does not say
"Who?"; he turns to Christ. But that view, also, with its
superficiality, imagines that, when you turn from chapter 7 to
chapter 8, all your problems are solved, you never have any more
difficulty and never any more struggle; whereas Paul in chapter 8,
verse 13, says, "But if through the Spirit ye do mortify the deeds
of the body, ye shall live." You have got to do that; it is not
all done for you after you have had the "second blessing," and
have "handed it all over to Christ." No! "If you, through the
Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall
live."

What, then, is the position? The Apostle is
not describing his own experience here; but, as I have continued
to repeat, he is concerned to tell us a number of things about the
Law, and to show us that the Law cannot save in any respect; it
cannot justify, it cannot sanctify. That is his one object in the
whole of the passage. His interest is in the Law. In verse 5 he
says that the Law makes us sin more than ever; in verse 13 he says
"the law kills me." He knew he would be criticized and
misunderstood over this, so he answers the objections. That is all
he is doing; and he puts it in this dramatic form. He personalizes
the whole argument. He says in effect, "If you say that the Law
was meant to save, and can save, the position you leave me in is
this, that I know that the Law is spiritual. Yes, but I am carnal;
what can I do? What is the point of knowing that the Law is
spiritual? I approve it, I want to carry it out, but I cannot; I
am paralysed. That is my position; you are leaving me
there."

What sort of man is Paul describing
therefore? He is describing a man who is experiencing an intense
conviction of sin, a man who has been given to see, by the Spirit,
the holiness of the Law; and he feels utterly condemned. He is
aware of his weakness for the first time, and his complete
failure. But he does not know any more. He is trying to keep the
Law in his own strength, and he finds that he cannot. He therefore
feels condemned; he is under conviction. He does not know, he does
not understand the truth about the Gospel, about salvation in and
through the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the experience of large numbers of
people, sometimes of people who have been reading a book on
Revival, or the biography of some great saint. Suddenly they are
brought under conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit. They see that
the whole of their past is wrong, that it is loss. They see the
meaning of the Law for the first time. They have lost their
self-righteousness, they are "dead," they are "killed" by the Law;
and they then try to put themselves right, but they cannot do so.
They may remain like that for days and for weeks, even for years.
Then the truth about Christ and His full salvation is revealed to
them, and they find peace and joy and happiness and power. They
glory in Christ and His Cross and offer up their praise. All we
can say for certain is that they are under deep conviction of sin.
But they have not seen the truth clearly even about justification,
let alone about sanctification. This man is under the condemnation
of the Law, and feeling his utter hopelessness, and helplessness,
and spiritual death. He is "under" what the Apostle calls "the law
of sin and death."

Why did the Apostle write all that?

He did so for two reasons;

FIRSTLY, to answer the charge that was
brought against him that he was dismissing the Law of God, and
saying that it was evil.

But he had a SECOND and a much stronger
reason which he has given us in the first six verses of the
chapter. It was to show us that there is a way of sure deliverance
in Christ; that which he had already said in verse 14 of chapter
6: "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the
law, but under grace." Chapter 7 is an exposition and elaboration
of that theme. "All is well," Paul seems to say, "you are not
under the law. You are like the woman whose husband is dead; you
are dead to the law, and you are married to another, even to him
that was raised from the dead, who is full of life and power, and
will produce children out of you. He will impregnate you, he will
put his life into you, and you shall bear fruit unto God. You will
no longer be seeking to do this "under the law." You have been
delivered from that in which you were held, and you will serve in
newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter" (verses
1-6). Such is his great and glorious message; and in these verses
from 7 to the end of the chapter we have nothing but two
parentheses in which he deals with difficulties, and nothing else.
He will go on in chapter 8 to give us his experience as a
regenerate man in Christ Jesus, who has been "made free from the
law of sin and death" and who is now able to do what he could not
do before because of the weakness of the flesh. This, then, is the
position. This section is but a parenthesis to show us in a clear
and dramatic way what the Law could not do because it was "weak
through the flesh." Thank God, this is not the picture of the
regenerate man! The regenerate man is the man I have been
depicting and describing in the many quotations from this Epistle
and the other Epistles, and the writings of other Apostles, and
above all, in the words of the Lord of Glory Himself who said, "If
the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."